Jay-Z: Paragon for the 'American Dream' or Corporate Puppet?

Jay-Z was featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine last month alongside investor genius/billionaire Warren Buffet. What does this have to say about the authenticity of hip hop? Is Jay-Z a prime representation of the American dream; or is this just another example of an African American subcultural movement falling victim to white hegemony and corporate America capitalization? This week in Liner Notes, I attempt to offer both sides of the argument and leave you, as reader, to come to your own conclusions on the matter. The basic question I want you to think about is whether or not Jay-Z is an example of the richness and possibility of the rags-to-riches­ “American Dream” model, or if he is proof that all art is for sale, and success in America will inevitably lead to exploitation and appropriation.

The question of ‘authenticity’ is what really lies at the center of this debate. At what point does an artist’s work cease to be authentic? Perhaps the more important question is: Who is the authoritative voice that gets to decide? Mixed opinion on the arch of Jay-Z’s career goes without saying. There are some fans who feel he has grown, matured, and improved with age; while others believe that as Jay-Z’s success and popularity rose to the top, his music sank to the bottom.

Many hip hop fans with whom I have spoken (and who, I might add, have much more knowledge on the topic than I do) argue that Jay-Z has ‘sold-out.’ Being called a ‘sell-out’ is a pop culture phrasing no artist ever wants to hear. A brief look through American music and popular culture history tells a different story. Bob Dylan was called a ‘sell-out’ when, in 1965, he went from protest-poet laureate to the folk revivalists to rock ‘n roll star with a five-piece electric backing band. Years later, Dylan fans around the world acknowledge this change as perhaps the greatest moment of his career and rock scholars synonymously recognize it to be one of the most successful and profitable (in terms of talent and career-direction) transformations in the history of American music. So if the root of ‘authenticity’ lies within public opinion, which I think it does, then the verdict is still out on whether Jay-Z is a continuing success or not.

There can be no argument that Jay-Z is beyond successful when speaking in terms of financial gain and world-recognition. Shawn Carter (aka Jay-Z) was born in the projects of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Marcy Houses (located in Brooklyn, New York) where as a young teen he reportedly shot his brother for stealing from him and was a self-proclaimed crack-cocaine dealer. Now, Carter is the CEO of a multi-million, multi-faceted corporation known as Roc Nation, which includes entities such as Roc-A-Fella Records, Rocawear, and many other profit and non-profit organizations. Answers.com reports Carter’s January 2010 net worth to be greater than $785 million. Couple that with his wife’s, Beyoncé Knowles, net worth of $461 million (also sourced from Answers.com) and you get a total family worth of $1.246 billion. From a business standpoint and social upward-mobility point of view, there is no arguing that Jay-Z falls under the category of “success.” But what about his music? Has it suffered or flourished for this wealth and fame?

Jay-Z’s most recent album (The Blueprint 3) was also, by all accounts, a massive success. Independently, the single “Empire State of Mind” stayed in the number one spot for five consecutive weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100, and the overall LP was number one on Canadian, UK, and U.S. R&B, Rap & Hip Hop, and Pop album charts when it debuted in 2009. Had Jay-Z turned pop? And if so, how did the hip hop nation feel about it?

The question I pose to the reader is whether Jay-Z’s overcoming social-class oppression is an example of what is possible in 2010 America, or a one-off exception to the rule. Some may argue that Jay-Z is not a success at all, but has only become a corporate puppet. This argument carries the logic that success isn’t about sitting in a three-piece suit next to Warren Buffet on Forbes TV; it is more about recognizing the unjust disparities in this nation between the rich and the poor and seeking to bridge the gap--something Jay-Z has yet to do. To those coming at the debate from this side of the line, Jay-Z is not seen as a symbol of social upward mobility at all; instead he has become an agent of capitalist appropriation and a puppet to help sell the myth that anyone in this country can “make it.” I would expect then, that those people who feel this way could care less for “hip-pop.”

I don’t know where I stand in the debate. One of the common complaints about my editorials posted weekly is that I never offer my reader my stance on the cultural debates I present. I have been accused by some of asking the questions and then wavering, or just plain omitting, which side of the fence I stand on. Therefore, in order to appease those readers who would prefer I act more Bill O’Reilly’esque in the question of whether Jay-Z is an example of success from the streets of a tough neighborhood, I would have to disagree with anyone who contends that he is not, and argue that he is. Although I understand the point and idealism of re-structuring the measures by which we gage success, I guess I am more optimistic about the possibilities a democratic state has to offer, as imperfect as it is. Seeing Jay-Z being interviewed alongside Warren Buffet in a $15,000 suit and knowing his background brings a smile to my face; not disgust. And to think that the man did this on the back of hip hop beats and witty rap lyrics further supports my feeling that so much is possible if one is just willing to look inward as opposed to living a life with no mirror.

The King & The Jester

While doing some research for this week’s Liner Notes I came across an interesting article on a blog I used to write for called Dog On A Root. Author Jim Young has recently written a convincing argument venting his frustrations on Elvis Presley’s undeserved designation as “The King of rock ‘n roll.” While I find myself disagreeing with Jim’s point of view on most of the topics he decides to discuss on Dog On A Root, I must admit that his position on Presley’s misnomer is one with which I am in agreement. I have written a lot on the foundations of Hip Hop and Indie recently, and have not discussed the roots of rock ‘n roll in quite some time. Using Young’s article, titled Dethroning The King of rock ‘n roll, I want to add my thoughts on how Elvis came to be recognized as the “King,” what injustices this delivers to some of the other contributors in the shift of American music that took place in the late forties and early fifties, and how the problem lies in the assumed notion of the term rather than the term itself.

Young starts off his article with a very valid question: “Can someone please explain to me how Elvis was ever crowned the King of rock ‘n roll?” While my answer can be argued from many different angles, the best response I can provide to this very open-ended question is this: “Elvis earned such a title as a result of appearing in the public eye at a time when America was desperate to invent their own unique and independent national identity.”

In the years immediately following World War II, the U.S. found themselves suddenly at the centre of a transforming global culture. This gave rise to a very important question in need of an equally important response: ‘What does it mean to be American?’ For a country that had been quickly projected into the cultural spotlight, and who had yet to come to terms with its own racial politics, Elvis Presley provided the perfect iconic spokesperson—an all-American country boy, with good-looks and small-town charm, and yet who embodied the gusto to perform country and rhythm ‘n blues music with African American swagger. This combination of a white American hero in touch with his fetishization for African American subcultural gave voice and image to the new American identity—in my opinion, an image that still very much exists today (look at Eminem and The Black Keys as examples).

I feel Young’s re-designation of Presley to ‘court jester’ is an accurate and intelligent one. I agree with the reassignment and explanation he provides to his reader: “Not unlike a court jester, Elvis was a GREAT entertainer with a GREAT voice.” However, I feel Young goes too far when he remarks, “[b]ut let’s face it. [sic] That’s all he was and that’s all he contributed to rock ‘n roll.”

Elvis offered more to rock ‘n roll and the American identity than pure entertaining and smooth vocals. Following this logic, one could have a substantial argument for over 90 percent of rock ‘n roll legends offering nothing more to American culture than ‘entertainment.’ If Young is saying that Presley wasn’t “innovative” enough to earn the handle “King” (which is what I think he is saying), his argument weakens. I agree that Elvis lacked innovativeness and originality, but not all Kings are necessarily inventive or groundbreaking; nor do they have to be. What they are responsible for is the leadership of their subjects. Therefore, it is not so much that Elvis being labeled as “King of rock ‘n roll” is a misnomer as it is how the public interprets what this moniker means.

People too easily associate Elvis Presley as the King of rock ‘n roll to mean that he invented it. This is the crux of Young’s argument; the beef he has with the term and the common understanding of the term’s meaning. Young feels “[t]here are many other much more deserving contenders for the crown of King of rock ‘n roll such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and of course Chuck Berry.” I think he is right; I just have a problem with his language. What I argue is that there are many “more deserving contenders” who should be identified as the innovators of rock ‘n roll ahead of Elvis—and the artists Young names is a great place to start. So while we agree in the base principal of the notion, it is the terminology Young resists, whereas it is the public’s perceived association of what the term means to which I resist. In other words: I am fine with calling him “King”; I am not okay with what most people think “King” to mean.

As ‘King,’ Elvis Presley brought African American rhythm and blues to white audiences across the country; he pushed the envelope of acceptability on prime-time radio and in mainstream television and performance; and he helped to secure the mythology of the postcolonial American identity. In short, he “delivered the message to his subjects” and the whole world bought in. However, like Young, I agree that he was a mere “spokesperson for the composers of his songs;” he was adorned a crown not based on his achievements; and he was merely a “performer” with a message unwritten by him but by the African American and country and western subcultures that made up the cultural landscape from which he came (namely Tupelo, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee).

Young ends his article requesting that Chuck Berry reclaim the crown that is rightfully his. I cannot emphasize enough my agreement with Young’s frustration and sentiments that Presley receives all the attention of ‘King’ while performers like Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Brown (only to name a few) for the most part go unnoticed. I only feel that rather than transpose the crown, let us focus on exposing the other members of court as more influential than the man whose face gets painted on the royal portrait. I know Jim Young personally, and I therefore expect him to agree with me when I pose the notion that King and Jester are interchangeable terms.

I guess when it’s all said and done, I am actually doing a terrible job of responding to the article because what I am really doing is answering the question with a question: Are all Kings not really mere court jesters of their own monarchy anyhow?

The Profane & The Prophetic

A professor/friend of mine told me over lunch yesterday that no one under the age of eighty watches 60 Minutes. I had to disagree with him on the basis that I am below the age of eighty and love the show. But I also had to agree with the point he was driving at, as I don’t know anyone else who watches it as religiously as I do, let alone enjoys it as much.

Assuming my professor-friend to be correct, not many of you would have seen this past Sunday’s episode in which Anderson Cooper sat down for a twenty minute interview with Hip Hop icon Eminem in what was his first television appearance in over three years. The past year has been a “triumphant comeback for a superstar who had all but disappeared" from the Hip Hop scene. Struggling with addiction and surviving a near-death overdose two and a half years ago, the thirty-seven year old rap star is back in the spotlight after a recent two-show run with friend and collaborator Jay-Z. Some of you may have caught snippets of the 60 Minutes story on YouTube or Hulu.

At one point in the interview, Eminem tried to explain the art of his craft: "People say that the word ‘orange’ doesn’t rhyme with anything and that kind of pisses me off,” griped Mathers. “I put my or-ange, four-inch, door hinge in stor-age and ate porr-idge with George. You just have to figure out the science to breaking down words." Apparently this is something ABC News editors have been able to effectively do as well—but with a much different motive. While Eminem aims to “bend” words for artistic expression, ABC looks to chop words to sell advertising space on invented controversy. You see, the ABC news team was doing their best propaganda on Monday night in hopes to sell some viewers on the “controversy” of the piece. This, like most things on news stations these days, really irked me. There was nothing controversial about the interview at all. The angle ABC was going for in their story cemented my theory on the idiocy of twenty-first century news producers who continually prove to the world how incapable they are of understanding truth, meaning, and speech in context over the selective gathering and editing of words.

The ‘controversy’ ABC sought to expose came late into the thirteen-minute story, when Anderson Cooper addresses Eminem’s history of profanity and verbal abuse towards women and the homosexual community. When asked if he felt any degree of responsibility for sending a negative message to the young fans of his music, Eminem replied: “I feel like it's your job to parent them. If you're the parent, be a parent." When asked if he dislikes gay people, he responded, “I don't have any problem with nobody," and then further defended himself by alluding to his own parenting practices: "Profanity around my house--no. But this is music. This is my art."

This is where ABC News decided to have fun with the rapper, mocking him by sarcastically calling his home “surprisingly profanity-free.” It appears just about everyone has decided to forego the overarching story behind Eminem’s rise to fame. His use of the word “faggot” is more important than his struggle with addiction, return to sobriety, and a life of creation and public-performance. When discussing the topic, Eminem tells Cooper: "I felt like I was being attacked. I was being singled out, and I felt like, ‘is it because of the color of my skin? Is it because of that you’re paying more attention?’ … Like, I just didn't invent saying offensive things, ya know?”

As a student of music history, I would love to get a shot at each user who has commented on ABC’s thread of opinions just to see what music each one of them individually listens to. I bet most online users who comment on such things are in the dark as to who their musical heroes really are, let alone what some of the messages behind their lyrics stand for.

I guess Eminem on 60 Minutes defending his use of the word “faggot” is news to some people. Let’s ignore the fact that he tells Cooper there is “no excuse” for abandoning your children, an epidemic in today’s lower class neighborhoods and one from which he is a victim. “If my kids moved to the edge of the earth, I’d find them. No doubt in my mind. No money, no nothing, if I had nothing, I’d find my kids.” Let ABC overlook the fact that he came from the slums of Detroit where he had to learn to survive on his own as a child, or that he rose from the all-too-common lower-class life American news stations pretend don’t exist.

Marshall Mathers chooses not to hide his emotions behind his words. Where he is comfortable with anyone’s sexuality, he verbalizes the terms as a form of expression that reflects the environment from which he was socialized. Corporate America (i.e. ABC and CBS News) chooses to pretend that environment doesn’t exist, or turns its back upon itself, and instead points the finger at Eminem and his lyrics, sardonically judging him as both artist and parent.

Cooper says of him, “He’s back like a fighter; trying to win from the crowd, one simple thing…”

Eminem: “Respect.”

“Respect?”

“Respect.”

Candide (2:42)

(Please ignore this cheesy video. Just listen to the song and read.)

Whack!

Imagine if you woke up this morning and your entire world was cartoon. Everything was real and in its place, but in an animated state. What style is your world going to be? Would everything look like the Bugs Bunny cartoons? The early black and white Mickey Mouse railroad? Or modern Japanese Hentai? Does it really matter? “This is awesome!”

“Law, law, law, loddie.” bmp bmp

“Law, law, law, loddie.” bmp bmp

Imagine this song playing ubiquitously. You dance everywhere you go.

“Yeah, yeah, ye--, ye--, ye--, yeah.”

There is no time for coffee or breakfast on a morning like this. You want to get as much out of your drawn world as possible before it transforms its way back to a concrete state. So what is the first thing you do? Go marching through the city of course.

Everything from delivery trucks to bicycles and pigeons to poodles is in a warped tour. Fito’s rolling tempo and The Mole’s jumping bass keep time. You begin to take giant cartoonish strides with both hands in your pockets like Cab Calloway as Koko the Clown from the Betty Boop shorts.

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”

(Roll with me here)

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”

A bearded man on the corner begins to blow into a harmonica twice the size of him. When he inhales, his torso inflates like a hot air balloon. He sweeps over the different reed openings on the personified harp. Both the fire hydrant and street lamp take on human personality and bounce in their grounded positions. Black quarter and eighth notes begin to float upwards from harmonica to the sky.

You stop for a minute to take it in. You pull your left hand from your pocket and snap your fingers along with the hustler. The music is fast, but you are shuffling at your own rhythm, lucid and fluid.

A barber steps out of his shop and begins to play bass notes on an exaggerated comb. He plucks them one by one creating that jazz scale synonymous with the day’s soundtrack. He stops, and points to the little shoe shine boy working on the businessman’s banker-leather. The shiner equipment turns into a mock drum kit so he can solo. The little boy plays skins on his brushes, polish tins, and tip-money jar that have since come to life.

Back and forth the barber and shoe shine go. It is a friendly dual to see who can out play the other. The embodied comb and polish join the competition in fun. Pretty soon the dual turns to collaboration.

Leaning out the window of a third storey brown stone is someone you recognize, regardless of your new illustrative environment. With Parisian hat and exaggerated sunglasses, the pianist stretches his arms onto the overhanging laundry line turning the drying garments into keys. “Is that Dr. John?” Hell yeah it is.

Now entirely out the window, the cartoon Dr. John bounces and tightropes his way across the laundered clothes like an agile monkey, kicking at each one to make a new sound. Barber, shiner, and the doctor send musical notes into the atmosphere while the buildings squat and rise to the beat of their sound.

“Law, law, law, loddie.”

“Time to move on,” you tell yourself. You round the corner and come across two deliverymen loading bread onto a truck.

“Yeah, yeah, ye--, ye--, ye--, yeah,” sings the one.

“Yeah, yeah, ye--, ye--, ye--, yeah,” answers the other.

The baker steps out of the bakery with a basket of croissants and turnovers and pastries.

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum,” he announces as he scatters breads around the neighborhood. Each one finds the clutch of a dancing neighbor.

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”

With the toss of the last croissant, you enter the bakery and everything becomes real. The music plays its crescendo finalé. You get your coffee and sit down to a silent bakery.

A black schoolgirl walks by the window and sings softly under her breath, “Hey, shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”

The Song that Changed the World

This week’s edition of Liner Notes is inspired by the recent Late Night with Jimmy Fallon clip that is a current online sensation. If you don’t know what I am talking about, you really should check it out.

To sum it up, Jimmy Fallon and guest star Justin Timberlake take their audience through the history of Hip Hop in less than three minutes. Importantly, they are accompanied by one of the genre’s greatest musical acts ever, The Roots. I must have watched the video over ten times this weekend and was twittering and emailing it out to all my friends. It really is that incredible. If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to watch it after reading this post.

The medley starts off with one very important beat. It has become a musical loop recognized by just about anyone in the modern, western world over the age of twelve. The now eponymous phrase was the beginning of a song so important, that not only a brand new genre was soon named after its opening lyric, but an entire culture—one that is now studied independently of all other cultures in university classrooms across the United States and the UK. That rhythmic cowbell, bongo drum, and left-hand piano downbeat riff are as recognizable as the opening chords to The Beatles’ “Let It Be” or the opening drum solo of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” Before any words come into the speakers, we get an electric bass line along to some simple hand clapping that has as much familiarity today as Stevie Wonder’s “Superstitious.” And then it starts: the phrase that would change music forever: “I said a hip, hop, hippie and the hippie, to the hip-hip-hop, you don’t stop the rock it to the bang, bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.”

I haven’t been able to entirely narrow down the history of the term “Hip Hop” with complete academic confidence. But one story goes (and please note, I have only verified this through various websites and have done no true scholarly research that can support this urban legend) that Keith Cowboy, a rapper with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, used the term in a freestyle rap session to tease a friend who had just signed up with the U.S. Army. Pretty soon thereafter, other rappers, including most famously now, The Sugarhill Gang, adopted the phraseology into their own rap songs. In 1979 when The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” became a massive hit in the United States, and around the rest of the world for that matter, music critics and African American culturists and writers had a new independent and empowering term for what had been known as “disco rap” up until that point.

This is a very subtle, but very important moment in the history of the culture, and in the history of western society. Calling the music “disco rap” showed a reliability or comparison to other forms of western “white” music. “Disco,” for the most part, was a mainstream, white person’s style of dance. Disco clubs in New York, L.A., and Miami were celebrated in opulence. It was the eighties—times of large spending, economic exuberance, and social divide. At the turn of the decade any fan of mainstream American popular music really only had one of three roads to travel down: 1) Punk; 2) Disco; and 3) Soft seventies rural-rock. Each one of these is a white (and with the exception of Disco), male oriented form of expression. Black and Puerto Rican DJs and musicians in New York were finding new ways to celebrate their cultural distinction, social class barriers, and ethnic histories through music. By calling what was happening in the Bronx “disco rap,” African American artists were being subjected and pigeonholed into an associative genre that was miles apart in style. There was nothing “disco” about what DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Grand Wizzard Theodore were doing. What they were doing was inventing a new style of composition, one that was worthy of its own name leading to its own identity. So when universal Zulu Nation founder Afrika Bambaataa credited the term “Hip Hop” to describe the emerging culture from the Bronx, the African American and Puerto Rican artists who were responsible for it were finally able to step out of the shadow of a gentrified musical class and industry and give birth to a culture that, thirty-odd years later, has changed the dynamics of societies all over the world. Just try and name one culture that does not have its own form of Hip Hop—from the fashion to the music, and not forgetting the all-important attitude?

I could write an entire book on where it goes from there. In fact, entire books have been written on such a subject. But a much more fun and entertaining way to take in the history of the Hip Hop can be found in the link mentioned at the beginning of this article. Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake go from “Rapper’s Delight” to “Empire State of Mind” in one furious breath, one jumped up, bang-boogied, beat. Think of the set scene here: two white, mainstream American pop celebrities (JT obviously a lot more than JF) performing the history of Hip Hop for a predominantly white audience (shown in the clip) with The Roots supplying the music. It isn’t so much about racial distinction, as it is about the blurring of lines. One has to wonder how much Hip Hop as a musical genre had to play in that evolution. What was once considered a bunch of lower class, degenerate youths from the slums of Manhattan came to give us an identity that saw a presidential candidate draw obvious reference to a rap song during one of his campaign speeches (President Barack Obama references Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulders” when he “brushes his shoulder off ” in a speech one day after being attacked by Hilary Clinton and George Stephanopoulos during the 2008 Democratic Leadership race. I think it is safe to say that Hip Hop has modernized the American identity, and it all began with a song.

But who am I to tell you about it. Watch the clip. After all, in the most paradoxical and sincerely hypocritical way imaginable, I believe music should be watched and listened to rather then written and read about.

John's bur. Ill in noise. (1:34)

Songs don’t have to be long to be great. In fact, if an artist can express his deepest emotions in a minute thirty-four, it is probably a result of genius and talent rather than surrender. Billy S. did say, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Puttin' your cards in the table isn't a drawn out thing.

She’s all that I think of.

And who has more soul than Tom Waits? In less than two minutes he encapsulates everything it feels to have your heart broken, and the discomfort of wondering where she is; what heart she is breaking. He knows where she is from, but where has she gone?

She grew up on a farm there.

Tattooed in his heart, and now a dangling appendage--static and dead to the rest of his vacant spirit--Waits struggles with the notion of amputation. What does it mean to ‘abandon love?’

And yet all he can do is sit at a piano with the rest of the broken-hearted, stroking a ninety-second melody on subdued keys, and remind himself of where she is from.

He can’t live without her. He was her only boy.

He knows where she is from. He has been there many times. What was once an unnoticed pastel fleck on a map of the Midwest is now an associative. It symbolizes death of an abstract, severance of an imagined euphoria. He is well outside McHenry now. But he is nowhere near

Johnsburg, Illinois.

You can sense the strain in the singer’s voice. A wrong key is hit. He musters up the strength to mutter the name of her hometown. Wrong notes signify his defeat. He wants the song to keep playing itself; he wants the melody to run on forever. But he knows it can’t. Like everything else close to his heart, this song is

over.