BILLY BLINDSPOT: PULITZER AWARD FOR RAP SINGER IS A LOAD OF RAP
Billy Blindspot
Senior Features Writer
What’s that noise I hear? Is it the sound of a man facing a deadline and ham-fistedly pounding out proof that the world has left him behind — or Yer Da displaying an astounding level of ignorance and contempt towards the most culturally dominant art form of the past 35 years? Might it even be both?
I ask these pressing questions upon discovering that this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music has gone not to proper music (i.e. opera) but to an oik with trendy hair called Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar? No, me neither. I couldn’t tell Kendrick Lamar from Anna Kendrick, and I don’t know who that is either because I don’t lower myself to watching Hollywood films. It’s Kurosawa or nothing for this cinephile (okay, maybe a bit of Truffaut or even the Three Colours trilogy if I’m letting my hair down!).
I’ve highlighted my lack of knowledge about Mr Lamar (and by the way, what happened to good old-fashioned names like Perry Como or Vera Lynn or Slade?) to make the point that learning even the most minute detail about this rap performer would be to grant him an importance that his juvenile jingles do not merit. My approach exposes the worthlessness of his ‘music’, not the laziness, pomposity and sheer obnoxiousness of my ‘writing’.
Seriously though, rap music? More like CRAP music if you were to ask me! Isn’t rap, at best, a restlessly inventive medium that has come to dominate pop culture, followed in the politically-charged footsteps of Nina Simone, James Brown and The Last Poets, encouraged lyrical dexterity, led to numerous innovative and culturally significant offshoots such as grime, found its way into boardrooms, Broadway and the White House, provided role models and a sense of community for the disadvantaged and disaffected, given back to the troubled areas its success stories have emerged from (e.g. the $10m donation from Dr. Dre to Compton High School) and, most importantly, delivered stone cold classics as diverse as California Love, N.Y. State of Mind, Doo Wop (That Thing), Straight Outta Compton, Concrete Schoolyard, The Message, Get Ur Freak On and, yes, Humble? Sorry, I mean isn’t rap, at best, a sorry stream of semi-literate consciousness or some other shite like that?
I think of rap as a collection of nonsensical lines that barely rhyme. I mean, compare the sheer laziness of Eminem’s “I let the beat commence so I can beat the sense in your elite defence/I got some meat to mince, a crew to stomp and then two feet to rinse/I greet the gents and ladies, I spoil loyal fans/I foil plans and leave fluids leaking like oil pans” with a proper artist like Sting’s “It’s no use, he sees her/He starts to shake and cough/Just like the old man in that book by Nabakov”. No contest, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Besides, how can rap be considered culturally relevant when it has so little shelf life? I mean, people talk about Doctor Dre (maybe he can operate on my ears after I have listened to some rap songs!), but when I searched for him using the electronic keyboard on my personal computer I saw a song from 1992 called ‘Nothing but a G Thing’. 1992? That’s 26 years ago! His hateful lyrics have seen him consigned to the ‘Where are they now?’ file, I imagine because I haven’t researched it and also I don’t notice those big headphones everyone’s wearing.
I should also, while I’m Yer Da-ing the absolute fuck out of this, take the time to be dismissive of Ices T and Cube, for no apparent reason other than that they both have ‘Ice’ in their name. From what I can tell, it’s not like Ice T is a widely respected elder statesman of the genre who stood up to a hugely conservative US Government and the NRA and influenced countless other performers. Similarly, my zero research shows no indication that Ice Cube was the key lyrical force behind NWA’s iconic ‘Straight Outta Compton’, or that he went on to achieve major success as a solo artist and eventually parlayed it into a popular and lucrative film career. Nah, I’ll probably just say something glib and straight-up false like “anyone related to frozen water has melted in the increased heat of relevance”. In fact, the only rapper with ‘Ice’ in his name who I won’t mention is Vanilla Ice, and he genuinely was a one-hit-wonder with “ a collection of nonsensical rhymes”.
This would be a good moment for me to double-double-double down on my ignorance by referring to Mr Lamar’s “very rich gold-chained throat”. Having spent precisely no seconds researching his background, I can only assume that Mr Lamar was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as opposed to say, growing up on welfare in a neighbourhood blighted by gang violence, a life which he transcended thanks to ambition, effort and talent.
I offer no evidence to support my dismissals, because why expend time and energy on actually learning something when I could just stand outside and yell at a cloud?
P.S. The book I’ve written which has nothing to do with any of this should have won a Pulitzer.
TOMORROW: Billy asks why the story of Alexander Hamilton couldn’t have been told by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice
