Female rap beef is outta control

Rap beef has always possessed a kind of WWE quality by definition, but there's something rather dispiriting about the way in which dis wars between female performers tend to get hyped up that little bit more, as if the likes of beef-seeking-missile Azealia Banks and net-celeb femcee Angel Haze are only really interesting when they're pulling each other's metaphorical weaves out. Even supposedly liberal, left-leaning publications like the Guardian can't resist a good old-fashioned cat fight, it seems.

Of all the female rappers to have emerged over the last couple of years, Azealia Banks is one of the most intriguing. Unlike certain of her peers, who've sought validation via co-signs from established male performers or somewhat unreliable internet buzz, she's blessed with a strongly individualistic streak. She seems determined that she'll be the one to dictate the terms upon which she'll stand or fall, whether that be via all the “Little Mermaid in the hood” imagery or by choosing to rhyme on tracky house beats or over twitchy, Warp-inspired electronics, rather than voguish Lex Luger knock-offs or the obligatory Mike Will beat. All of which makes her propensity towards bouts of public bickering with the (often inferior) competition seem that much more bewildering.



But perhaps a more worthwhile question might be; in the already hyper-competitive world of hip-hop, how come female rappers generally exhibit a more alarming level of open aggression towards their peers than even their male counterparts? Never mind that it plays up to every lazy stereotype you've ever heard about some women being more anti-woman than even the most avowed misogynist. It sometimes seems as if there's a compulsion to view all other female emcees as threats to be torn down at every opportunity. I say “sometimes”, because it's worth pointing out that this applies much more readily to US performers than their British equivalents, who are models of virtuous, supportive sisterhood in comparison.

Perhaps it's because they've noticed that the industry at large only seems prepared to accommodate one successful female rapper at any one time. It's a little like the one-in,one-out situation with reggae acts. After all, how many people can name more than one currently active, internationally successful reggae act with widespread name recognition? I'll give you Sean Paul as a starter, but after that I'll bet that anyone else you name either isn't really that big, is in decline or is dead. But I digress.

There's a widely-held perception that, rightly or wrongly, rap's core audience simply isn't interested in female rappers. Consequently the industry will only seriously invest in either the most extraordinarily talented (Missy) or the ones with a strong image, preferably one which is highly sexualised (Lil' Kim). Occasionally, there's a striking confluence of both skills and image (Nicki and Azealia), but for the rest of the pack all that remains is a frantic scramble to get through the door before it slams shut. A big part of that scramble involves a ruthless trashing of the competition along the way, and so we end up perpetually witnessing something like the closing scene of Blue Collar, only with Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor replaced by a parade of rappers with two X chromosomes. Which, at its worst and most spiteful, manifests itself in the kind of smack-talk that involves a black woman making sideways remarks about another black woman's skintone. In the words of Jeru, ain't the devil happy.

Rolling Stone stays failing.

A$AP Rocky, a leading scourge of get-off-my-lawn rap

Regular readers, if there were ever any, may by now have worked out the main reasons I still post at all on here. The first of these is when I'm struck by a wave of guilt over the fact that I don't actually write enough and am letting my innate laziness get the better of me. The other is when I get tired of wondering whether a better, more eloquent writer than myself is going to state something that's plainly fucking obvious (or obvious to me, at least), leaving me with no choice but to say it myself or go slightly mad with frustration.

Rolling Stone has just published its list of the 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs Of All Time. Before moving on to the meat-and-potatoes of the whole thing, let me quickly point out that it's one of those shitty, cynically-formatted click-bait features that are becoming more and more common nowadays (hi, Complex!) and which feel like part of a massive conspiracy to waste everyone's time. But since people are no longer prepared to do anything so déclasse as...oh, I dunno, support the creators of physical media for which they pay once and can then read at their leisure at no further cost, then the subtext here would seem to be; eat those data charges and STFU like Sean Price.

And so, to the main event. The judging panel for this glorious exercise consisted of a broad selection of the great and good from the rap game, an assortment of hacks and a few randoms like Tom Morello and Vernon Reid, all of whom were asked to pick their favourites. Right now, elsewhere on teh internets, there is probably some over-earnest rap blogger twisting himself (it's always a "he") into a blind rage over the exclusion of deadprez, Immortal Technique or Lupe Fiasco, whilst wondering how it's possible that Talib Kweli would attach himself to a "greatest ever" list that makes room for Jay-Z (twice), Kanye and Missy. As it happens, I have few issues with the actual content itself. Taken as an arbitrary list of 50 great rap songs, rather than the definitive 50 Greatest Of All Time, there's not an awful lot on there that I'd argue against. On the other hand, the guiding principles behind it (or what I imagine them to be) are absolute fucking cocksnot – cosy, easily digestible rap nostalgia, lazy list-based journalism, and rock-crit values attempting to impose themselves on rap. Again.

To be honest, I've given up all hope of the rock press and its associated critical community ever managing to deal with rap on its own terms. You may as well try juggling smoke. Here’s what I mean. Take a random sample of English-language music publications from the last 10/15 years, possibly longer, and I'd bet large on at least half of them regularly defaulting to Public Enemy as the artistic yardstick whenever they cover hip-hop; "[rapper x] channels the spirit of Public Enemy", "[rapper y] will have the listener yearning for some of Public Enemy's righteous anger", et-fucking-cee. It won't matter a tuppenny fuck who they're writing about, and it's still happening. Now, try to imagine almost every review of a rock record you ever read trying to tell you it wasn't as good as Exile On Main Street. For clarity’s sake, Public Enemy are responsible for some of the greatest, most exciting music I've ever heard, but it's like this - they haven't made a truly great album in over twenty years. Public Enemy fell the fuck off ages ago. People might not like hearing it, and I don't particularly like saying it. But it's true.

Why should it matter, though? Who cares about the collective opinion of a bunch of people who'd probably insist that rap's been struggling against a long slide into irrelevance ever since PE failed to top Fear Of A Black Planet, as they make yet another drearily obvious attempt to establish A Canon, to re-order and re-shape rap into what they think it ought to be instead of accepting it for what it is? After all, they can comfortably tell you where rap was at twenty or even thirty years ago, but I wonder whether they'd have too much of a clue about where it's at now. I mean, doesn't anyone else think it funny that all these people seem to agree that the definitive high-water mark of the genre happens to be the exact point where the rock press finally declared that, yes, it might actually be possible for rap music to be more than just a craze, perhaps even something that could exist on the same plane of artistic worth as rock? And that that point was in 1982?

Which brings us to the rappers. Now, I'm not even remotely inclined to give them the same hard time I'd give the hacks. These are people who grew up on rap music, who lived and breathed it and, for the most part, continue to live and breathe it. Anybody who follows Dante Ross or ?uesto on Twitter can tell you that those two guys alone are on some super-heavyweight rap nerd shit - matter of fact, the latter's preamble might be the most worthwhile and entertaining thing about this whole shitshow. But I look at that list and factor in the age of all the rap dudes involved, and balance that with the strong likelihood that certain of the songs have vast nostalgic appeal that perhaps outweighs the usual consensus notions of “greatness”, and I still think, “Really..?” A bunch of rappers – this bunch of rappers - think Juicy is better than Hypnotize? Or that Paid In Full is better than I Know You Got Soul, and Strictly Business better than It's My Thing? They think – and this is really fucking suspect - the Jay tune that UGK got on is better than any other UGK record? Or any other Jay record, for that matter?

Although I doubt whether The Symphony or the remix of Flava In Ya Ear would be there at all without their input, I find it extremely hard to believe that the pros wouldn't have broader taste than this. Nah, this is something that has been skewed by a bunch of casual listeners who default to the same obvious choices every time and cannot fucking bear to deviate from the same rigid critical metric they've been pushing for the last three decades; the people who commission and occasionally write all those ridiculous “[X] Albums For People Who Don't Know Anything About Hip-Hop” pieces about a form of music that's existed on record for over 30 years. Just think about that for a minute. Imagine someone writing a piece called “[X] Albums For People Who Don't Know Anything About Rock” - in 1986. Seriously, if you still need to be led by the hand through hip-hop in 2012, then perhaps it isn't for you. Likewise, when your value judgements suggest that you stopped seriously listening to rap about twenty years ago, then you really need to fall back from any debate regarding what's what, and leave the arguing to the people who still give an actual fuck about it. You're welcome.

"...so guess who's gonna take the blame for my big mouth..."

Noel Gallagher's political career in full. Suit c/o Paul Smith, champers c/o the taxpayer.

If you're a working class kid made good, the worst possible sin you can commit is to Forget Where You Came From. Being seen to betray the values that made you The Man/Woman You Are Today is simply not done. Indeed, cross that particular nexus and it requires a very generous reservoir of public goodwill if you're ever to be welcomed back into the affections of an audience who no longer see you as one of them, as the manifestation of their hopes, dreams or ambitions. I doubt Noel Gallagher has completely burned his bridges with his ''things were better under Thatcher'' grumblings in a recent interview for The Daily Blackshirt's website, but he probably hasn't done himself too many favours either.

Generally speaking, Noel Gallagher makes for an entertaining and often very funny interviewee. I'd certainly much rather read or hear what he has to say than listen to the last few Oasis albums, for example (although Don't Believe The Truth was alright). Now and again, however, his tendency to deal in absolutes has betrayed an unpleasant small-c conservative streak. His pronouncements on Jay-Z at Glastonbury were profoundly ignorant, especially coming from someone who, by his own admission, never went as a regular punter and never strayed beyond the VIP garrison when he was there as a performer. Here's a man who quite obviously doesn't trouble himself too much with actually knowing what he's talking about, as was borne out when Jay delivered a headlining performance significantly more dynamic than the "each half of the band static on opposite sides of the stage and Liam sat on the drum riser" model that served Oasis so well. And now here he goes again, peddling the line that "hard times = great art", proving in the process what a witless piece of received wisdom that is, particularly from the mouths of those too complacent to spend much time looking at the bigger picture.

‘Under Thatcher, who ruled us with an iron rod,’ he says, ‘great art was made. Amazing designers and musicians. Acid house was born. Very colourful and progressive.’ That may well be true, but how much of that was directly or actively encouraged by the Tories? Very fucking little, unsurprisingly. As acid house was slowly beginning to take hold in the late 80s, full grants for students in higher education were coming to an end. This would be the last generation able to enjoy the absolute freedom to bum around at poly or uni while they figured out what they wanted to do with their lives; spending their student years forming bands, making films, writing, running club nights, painting or dicking around with graphic design and fashion, getting leathered and occasionally studying are the kind of luxuries no longer available to most kids from similar backgrounds to Noel, whose parents would invariably have to take a second job nowadays just to help pay for the books. If they could find a second job. In any event, the Tories saw little worth for "business" in the humanities or arts-related courses generally, so they were more or less doomed from the start. In fact, an education with no measurable practical value was considered little more than a frippery. Strike one, therefore, against Thatcher for dealing a death blow to precisely the kind of academic and cultural environment that helped produce and nurture the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, the Who, etc., etc. Difficult to believe you'd seriously want to cosign that, Noel. Difficult to believe you'd even have a fucking career without one half of those bands, frankly.

What's that, Sooty? What about all the kids who were politicised during a decade of war, strikes, riots, civil disobedience and spending cuts, you say (and my, how things change)? Didn't they support and help produce exactly the kind of great art Noel's talking about, you ask? Well, Sooty, let me answer your question with another question - aren't they just examples of great art thriving in spite of the circumstances? If you were to look at some of the places from where hip-hop emerged during roughly the same period - areas of incredible deprivation, with block after derelict block burnt out and abandoned to the mercy of fuck-knows-what - you wouldn't seriously call for a return to that, just to give Flo-Rida a bit of a reality check, would you? Do a Google image search for pictures of, say, the South Bronx or Bushwick during the 1970s or 1980s, and you might be inclined to think we weren't that badly off in the UK at all, relatively speaking. Certainly there wasn't anything like the same level of grinding poverty that many are facing now. Remember also that, during the 80s, we weren't yet looking at a mortally-wounded welfare state. Rather, one that was being ever-so-subtly run into the ground, to the point where public confidence in things like healthcare, education and transport would eventually decline to such a low that widespread privatisation and the "freedom" it purported to represent would be welcomed with open arms. You could still just about get by on the dole as well, although there were few greater folk devils in the eyes of the Tories during the Thatcher years than "the dole scrounger", except perhaps Arthur Scargill (and maybe Purple Akie). I ought to add at this point that I was never actually out of work under Thatcher, apart from when I was in further/higher Ed - nice little irony there if you like that sort of thing. Anyway, my point is that, theoretically, there still existed the freedom to indulge your nascent musical ambitions (or get yourself an education) without having to blow out band practice for Jobstart meetings, but this was only because the Tories hadn't figured out a way to dismantle the welfare state any quicker than they were doing already. It's funny to hear so many modern Tories attempt to claim the resourcefulness people displayed during those straitened times as vindication of the entrepreneurial spirit they stood for. The truth is they'd have wiped it off the face of the earth in an instant if they could have got away with it.

By the start of the 90s, after Thatcher had been tossed under a bus by her own party following the Poll Tax Riots, you began to notice more and more homeless people on the streets, especially in London, and the politics of selfishness the Tories had worked so hard to engender were beginning to bear fruit. It wasn't long before the kind of political engagement that was a hallmark of the previous decade began to dissipate, to be replaced by tens of thousands of people protesting the freedom to run around derelict grain warehouses in Great Harwood of a Saturday night flapping their arms about like e-brained biffs, while "Mersey Docks & Harbour Board v. all the striking dockers" continued on in comparative obscurity. One must presume that Noel Gallagher was too preoccupied at this point with getting Oasis off the ground to notice that the Tories had introduced the Criminal Justice Bill in an attempt to hold a pillow over the face of what remained of the "colourful and progressive" acid house movement, and that nightclubs would soon be safe once more for people wearing leather trousers and fluffy bras (sometimes together) and supping champers in roped-off VIP areas. A few years later, he was pictured shaking hands with Tony Blair. That's about as political as he's ever got, either before or since.

But you know what? I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He isn't above talking some right bollocks, as he's proved, but on the whole I don't think Noel Gallagher is anything like that daft. I don't believe he'd cut the legs from under himself like this. I'm going to assume that this whole thing has been spun massively by the Daily Blackshirt in an attempt to validate the mean-spirited, thin-lipped bigotry they so vigorously cheerlead for, and to shore up their position in anticipation of when they're swamped by the inevitable tide of delight at Thatcher's passing. A pity they couldn't have found someone to stitch up who was a little more "current", to use the parlance of our times, but that's to be expected. Still, My Big Mouth, eh, Noel?

UPDATE: It appears that Noel was indeed tucked up by the Maim. I'll let him off with this, but he'll be relieved to know I haven't stripped him of his Services to Gobshitery award for declaring side two of Abbey Road to be shit in The Word a few months back. Straight red, that.

Alexander McQueen and the rise of Shania Twain journalism

I don't know an awful lot about fashion, but I do know that anybody who's ever pulled on a pair of jeans for anything other than the purpose of manual labour is implicitly acknowledging certain things whether they like it or not. There's some proper "no shit, Sherlock" stuff coming up next, but please bear with me. Firstly, they are acknowledging that clothes can be more than just clothes in the most basic functional sense, and the things we wear make very specific statements about us, both as individuals and as a culture. By extension therefore, the people who create or model the stuff we end up wearing can be said to have a tangible influence upon society on all manner of levels. It may not be the most important, or even positive, of influences, but it's undeniably a significant one. You can find all the proof of this you'll ever need if you hang around the Oxford Street branch of Top Shop on any given Saturday. According to a friend of mine who works in the fashion business, it was well-known that Alexander McQueen, who was found dead on Thursday, had endured a grim few years on a personal level but, specifics aside, her view (and that of many others) was that the world of fashion had lost one of its brightest and most inspirational stars. She described him as "a genius in the vein of Yves Saint-Laurent; dark and troubled, but a romantic capable of great beauty". During Massive Attack's London gig later that evening, 3D dedicated Unfinished Sympathy to McQueen, similarly praising him as "an absolute genius".

Some people seem to have bristled at the use of this word in such a context, most notably Toby Young on the Hurleygraph's blog the following day. Rather like the once-omnipresent Canadian pop-country singer mentioned in the title above, Young wasted little time in declaring that the idea of McQueen being a 'genius' certainly didn't impress him much. Disguising his observations as an insight into the shallow world of the fashionista, he proceeded to beast McQueen over the course of a few hundred words. At the point he must have actually filed this tripe - the condensed version being "I met McQueen a few times and didn't like him", coupled with "the world of fashion is superficial" - McQueen probably hadn't even been dead 24 hours.

We see a lot of this sort of thing nowadays (thanks, Internet, but really, you needn't have), and here's how it usually goes. Person of note dies, people whose lives were in some way affected by dead person's work or life express sadness and grief on one hand, mad race to be first at letting the world know how unimpressed they are on the other. "Why all the fuss? He/she was just a pop singer/actor/fashion designer, and hardly a genius". As if only an Einstein could be such a thing and that it's unthinkable someone could be, within their very specific field of endeavour, a genius. In fact, this is more or less Young's opening point - Alexander McQueen? He just made frocks. Oscar Wilde and Jimi Hendrix? Now there's genius! Whilst I wouldn't argue with the latter point, you can always find someone, especially nowadays, who'll take against a well-established consensus for shits and giggles or, in some cases, with absolute sincerity. Such as the person who once insisted to me that Hendrix was simply an over-rated hack blues player, and that the Stone Roses' John Squire was by far the better guitarist. I swear to God.

It seems contrarianism is good for business, though, and in these straitened times people will do whatever it takes to get that money. Someone recently described the practitioners of this strain of lazy, bear-baiting, 'Shania Twain journalism' as "trollumnists", which I suppose is close enough for jazz. To me, it's just further depressing evidence of the general coarsening of public debate we find ourselves faced with; "freedom of speech" or "speaking one's mind" becomes the default justification for anyone in the business of spouting poorly-informed, insensitive, boorish crap. Elsewhere, in the Stygian depths of the comments sections, there's a bloody great hole through which anachronistic concepts like "common courtesy" are slowly draining away, while the malignant, paranoid ravings of what used to be known as The Silent Majority are cheerfully validated by a procession of lionhearted souls who supposedly speak truth to power but who are actually, for the most part, idiots. So, take a bow, Rod Liddle, Jeremy Clarkson, Melanie Phillips, Jan Moir, Kelvin Mackenzie, Richard Littlejohn, etc., etc. You've all done very well. By the way, meet Toby.

You could argue, I suppose, that Young is merely shining a light on a world overly preoccupied with the transient and the trivial and calling for a little perspective in the process. If you were being extremely polite, that is. But how polite would you want to be towards someone whose familiarity with his subject extends little further than having been rubbed up the wrong way by him and his retinue at a few photo shoots many years ago, yet remains sufficiently slighted that he'd apparently use the guy's death as an opportunity to exact some kind of revenge? Throw in a handful of cliches as applicable to the rag trade as the world of haute couture, add a few back-handed compliments about McQueen's "creative flair" (but no real talent, eh, Toby? Just "prima donna-ish...force of personality"), and hit "send". Someone on Young's Twitter feed complimented him for his "courageous and funny" piece. If we're living in a world where sticking the boot in on the freshly dead can be described as "courageous and funny", then we're fucking doomed.

Nice as it is to be paid for having an opinion, I would hope there could still be some value placed upon holding your tongue once in a while. Especially when the person on whom you're offering your "verdict" has, literally, just died. But if you really feel you must be heard, then why not ask yourself a few questions first? Y'know, questions such as, "Is this person a mass-murderer, or a despot who's brought misery and hardship to millions?". How about, "Did this person, through his or her work as a pop singer or a fashion designer, contribute in some way to the gaiety of nations?". Once you've done that, you might want to do everyone a favour and consider this perennial of maternal wisdom - if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.