On Golden age hip hop and uninformed newspapers

Is it possible to have strong opinions on misogyny and still like late 80's gangster rap? After discussing Django Unchained with some friends in school I got listening to the soundtrack on Spotify, especially this one remix of a 2pac song, and it got me in one of those weird gangster rap moods that come every once in a blue moon. I think it kinda started out with the Junsu video with the Chingy Dem Jeans-song really, but today I spent all day working to the tunes of Slick Rick.



Now Children's Story is a song about how doing illegal shit is dumb, and that's all well and good. His accent is just awesome. Things get a little more complicated when on the same album there's an (I'm sad to say) exceptionally catchy song called Treat her like a prostitute, and several other songs on the album that while rhythmically and rhyme-wise are really awesome, come with a terribly misogynistic world view. I've previously had these problems with other rappers, like Dr. Dre and N.W.A., back when I lived with my ex and was a second-hand old-school rap listener. Funny enough my ex was a giant douche with a misogynistic streak so technically I shouldn't be even remotely surprised.

The thing with all these musicians though is that even if their lyrics are horribly sexist, I'm still sitting there bobbing my head to it. I don't agree with what they're rapping about, but it's just so damn catchy, you know? Is it possible to be a feminist and like gangster rap at the same time? It's totally a guilty pleasure, I always feel a little immoral listening to it. Then again, I don't exactly condone their romanticizing violence, drugs or illiteracy either, so I guess all in all it just falls into the category of "You're a complete douche, but a talented douche who uses language in an interesting way, so I'll kinda let it slide".


Speaking of music, Swedish newspapers wrote about f(x) yesterday, branding it "The next big thing after Psy", which is just ridiculous and ill-informed. First of all, while f(x) are pretty good, they're nowhere near as good as other k-pop bands, or even k-pop girl bands. I mean, 2NE1 are far more likely to make it big in the West, seeing as they're already co-operating with will.i.am and CL has been branded the muse for fashion designer Jeremy Scott.

Pretty cool stuff.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, Psy isn't k-pop. Most regular people don't get this. Psy rose to fame by being a funny-looking man dancing a funny dance to a catchy tune. It's a joke. It's a joke to make fun of k-pop even. And don't get me wrong, I was all aboard the Gagnam style train, having a great time and dancing away, but I never seriously branded it k-pop and neither should you. It's rather awkward how newspapers can write about things they have no idea of and still keep a straight face and call it journalism. On one hand I'm psyched that they're even mentioning k-pop, but they should have someone who's listened to it at all write the articles. As is, probably anyone at a random K-pop nonstop night out could write a more accurate article than the one published.

I'll just leave these here for comparison.





In everything from fashion to catchy-ness of the song, to me, the winner is pretty damn clear. Also, holy shit, Dara's hair. Do want.

Oh my god, why doesn 't my hair look like that?