Why We Listen to Rap: Middle Aged, Middle Class, White Vegans.
26 July 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so Snorlax just asked a question here
what's your girlfriend's stance on rap and hip-hop music so the first email I sent to you was about the music in your videos not only the hip-hop music but also the video game music kid chameleon and toejam and Earl so yeah that was one of the first things that I asked that sort of suggested that you're older than you are you're 24 years old but you actually picked up on the cultural references both in terms of the video game music and the rap music and you and you knew that and you know also this kind of a famous thing within our relationship but even though there was nothing flirtatious about what she said in that email I absolutely picked up on the sub-basement of barely repressed sexual interests that was beneath the edifice of polite conversation about rap music via the first private email you sent to me was indeed a bell rapping you were asking you think you just wanted to track down some of the tracks you wanted to recorded them and so on yeah so you I mean you could talk about this I've already made videos about you know me and rap music I made a couple how did you first start listen hip hop and without you know without naming names we're not pointing the finger at anyone well actually I wanted to say that that email to you I drafted it like three different sizes racially send it to you so I really did cut down a lot of stuff that I was saying about how important your channel was to just my life like how it wasn't in the earlier drafts it wasn't there was more flirtatious material there was more flattering to over there's more talking about what my channel might say it's interesting yeah I mean obviously I never read those emails I read the final great I mean yeah you guys really oh um yeah so how I first got into hip-hop I I don't know I mean I'm from I'm from sort of Detroit I'm from one hour away from Detroit so I don't want to say that I'm actually from Detroit because I'm not from you know from getting from the ghetto but yeah it was really popular really popular in my hometown and Eminem was from Detroit it was probably the first rapper that I ever heard I remember I remember for me there was a turning point in my life I guess it was around the year 2000 when I was in a shopping mall in Canada and it's a standard it's a standard crappy uninteresting shopping mall in Canada the the Eaton Centre was something like that or Sears you know but as a mainstream brand like that and I was I was looking for clothes but I remember I was looking for those that didn't have a little leather that's what I remember maybe I'm wrong but that's what I remember and they started playing what was just ten years earlier considered really hardcore offensive hip-hop you know anything they're playing hip-hop that I can remember it seemed like just five years earlier mainstream radio didn't play like only the college station played or only like specialized on after 11 p.m. played it was like this is now being played as background music at the mall you know in in a clothing store so yeah I really lived through that where rap music made the transition from being something it lists it and provocative and you know kind of banned to being some of us just in the background like wallpaper that's so while it widely accepted that nobody thinks twice about it you know them abuzz so but did you have a period of your life where you listened to country music or something before wrapping you know no I never listened to country music but you know I did growing up my mom played a lot of music from the 60s and 70s and so I grew up with a lot of Motown a lot of like earlier today you were saying white people music oh yeah I want the one that I mentioned was Creedence Clearwater Revival but Queen Pink Floyd like Led Zeppelin those were things that I really started listening to it in an early age yeah and I think I told you when I was like 10 the first band that I really was into was cake you know but the other influence is video game music right so like I'd say like wait for me as a kid I'm simplifying slightly there was basically no guitar music that really mattered to me I was never into Pink Floyd or heavy metal and by the way a lot of kids when I grew up worshipped Guns and Roses which you know they're there but you know when I was a kid it was not ironic you know what I mean they worshipped guns Rosen they wanted to yep the Seattle San Nirvana and those guys right yeah so I I was never part of any of that which is interesting no me of course is a sites of information to say like guitar music and Rome you said no inflows about of course I just some of it reached me because it was so so ubiquitous but really I was never a fan of than I was never into that I was never into you to like u2 was huge for my generation of this kind of crap nothing it was never into I was never really into into white people music but when I look back now I wasn't a Sol Sol Sol is slightly more serious than most at Motown some Motown his soul some soul was mode you know they are not totally separate I was into soul I was into jazz I was into blues all right so that's you know again that's obviously African American dominated genres of music but also I was really influenced by a video game music so we listen to the other day some train of thought brought it up I put on the music from level one to our tight on the Sega Master System you know what I mean just like this is banging this is like the opening to to a rap track you know what I mean but it's definitely true in terms of the simplicity and the beat and just the format like yeah a lot of the the video game music I grew up with and so you wouldn't know this I was I'm not really old enough to notice but I had a friend and his father still had the Commodore 64 so Congress Eva that's really guys who were 10 years older than me who would mean to that I'm too young to mean that but this is this one from habit and converses for ludie goes in those the the the the music chip and it's called the sia to chip s ID the sid chip right now on youtube if you just do like sid chip c64 music there are all these youtube channels that that collect this stuff but commerce 64 their video games took a while to load and they had loading music i swear to god like in terms of probably like at a really early age forming my taste for hip hop you've got these banging chip tunes on the commodore 64 and that was it and there was nothing else to distract you there just be like like the screen would say loading and it's banging video game music which was better than like Nintendo music you know it was better than the simple you know video game converse 64 had a chipset that was a few steps up in terms of the sophistication of what what they could do with it musically so yeah probably hearing the loading tunes on Congress 64 and here because you think about the amount of repetition for some of the video game music as a child sega master system and then later Sega Genesis Sega Genesis at a really strong base like the base ship this is a nice fuzzy horror bass sound Sega Genesis music probably drew me into rap although as I say I already would have been flirting with the blues and jazz and soul and some stuff like that but yeah the final leap to being a rap fan you know was was hard to take because so much of the music was so outrageous ly meaningless you know like we had this so we looked the other day at some current hip-hop because a lot of well look he's like a listen to a little hip-hop but some of the other but listen to is five years old or something you know what I mean like it's not it's not classic or something but it's not a said in camo yesterday but most of us do that now the internet with the internet you know like you know you filter what you want to listen to you select what you think is gonna be good um but yeah sure if you like a track you overlook the extent to which the lyrics are meaningless but when you're a little bit leery you don't know you think who is this artists nurse you haven't heard before as a genre yeah unlike blues music because that was what I knew I already knew blues you know and I already knew jazzed are a new soul those songs are about something and normally the take boats out see what they're about and you go from there and like what like a great great track by Raekwon is called snake pond it's not about a snake it's not about a pond it's just a bunch of death threats it's a standard gangster rap great track love that driver here's another called ice water it's not about ice water you know like you know whoo tang is is a great example that were the relationship between the title and the chorus and the lyric there's none it's completely abstract right so for me definitely there was a kind of process of reconciling myself to the reckless abstract meaninglessness of what what goes on in the genre that was that was why it took me so long in a sense to become a fan of retinues I could say yeah somebody asked Osen or likes again so did you get it more into the rap / hip-hop music after a meeting eyes'll I don't think so when I first went off to college that was probably when I first started listening to more rap in hip-hop because trying to listen to it at my parents house I would encounter a lot of criticism and I guess maybe rightly so you know I'm a white girl from the suburbs of Detroit maybe I shouldn't be really into hip-hop or rap like but you know it is something I like listening to but yeah before I went off to college I listened to a lot more um alternative and rock music indeed but yeah when I went off to college I first started listening to like souls of mischief and mu Tang Clan and the notorious b.i.g Tupac like thing like I was looking just like the intro like intro to rap and hip-hop and then I just got more into it since then since then the other the other real difference new generations is just the cost of listening to music right so for me when I started University music was still something I had to pay for yeah and like when wu-tang put out a two CD album I can remember not when it was new a couple years after it came out picking everything iron flag by wu-tang and like let's say in Canadian dollars it was probably twenty five dollars or something it's like in the States maybe 20 or whatever 1999 or something that was a lot of money and like half of the tracks are garbage even if you're booting your loot Eggman come on you kidding me like you like every track of the album but that was a huge barrier to entry that was a big big difference and now fundamentally most rap or all rap is free if you decide to buy an album it's kind of a voluntary because you can hear it on YouTube you know if you don't you don't pirate it or whatever you can you can stay in the loop absolutely for free that's a huge huge difference and I really got into buying rap music when the CD was dying so at that time in Toronto so I remember buying secondhand ODB n-word please but ODB probably paid you know three dollars and 99 cents for Canadian or something because there was this period of time when CD as a medium was dying and all the store were unloading they were getting rid of their CDs and CD collectors were getting rid of it so that was for some when I was buying hip-hop but because we at the university radio station I I got to hear a lot of rap music before I really owned any justify university right I'm back in those days reading and writing essays I was listening to long long hours of radio so yeah via radio and in Canada we had the infamous much music that wasn't much music was in its heyday much music was our competitor to MTV and it's now garbage it's been garbage for years but back at that time it had this period of a couple of years it was really strong and they had they had quite good hip-hop coverage so you know I mean compared to MTV or what have you so yeah before I was actually paying money for it and then we entered this wonderful wonderful era when artists have to go into debt to release their music for free and not make a nickel or dime out of it so yeah what's wonderful for the listeners in some ways harder than ever for the artists right yeah yeah well I'll ask you a tough question I ask you tough question I'm 38 I got a four year old daughter around the time my daughter was born shortly after her birth ash I deleted all the rap music of my hard drive and I thought okay for the next 10 years I'm not gonna be listening to rap music agree this is built on death threats and boasting and you know who owns a bigger car and who stabbed more people over a bag of crack and whatever you know this is this is what the Charter is largely about right but I mean you know when you look at the future you're now 24 so coming up is is 34 and so on you know what would you or how you know do you see rap being you know consistently part of your adult life or what and where do you think where do you think it goes because we don't we don't go to nightclubs I mean oh okay if I were to ask you do you think in the next 10 years you're gonna go to a lot of live gigs and nightclubs or album or at least parties for rap I think neither one of us sees that we could go back to Canada we will see a little bee you know little bee is gonna perform live in Victoria I'm sure he's done it before he'll do it again but you know that's that's really not part of our lives it's really rap as a recording art you know that's part of us when you look at the next 10 years what do you say you're going to open open a vegan rap rap based on what we just saw in WorldStarHipHop the other day I don't think I don't think it'll play a huge role in the future of my you know but um yeah music yeah yeah it seems pretty bad but there are some artists that I that I am still interested in and whatever they come up with next your old Droog Jacob so yeah I think I think I would probably still listen to it I love music all kinds of music I think we differ in that way I mean you you like you like other kinds of music as well but I do like all different genres so you know if we're with your daughter obviously I will not play grab music but I still feel confident that there's a lot of music that I could play around your thigh still really like yeah yeah but yeah I'm not sure we'll see we'll see how the genre progresses yeah I mean it could be I mean the thing is there's enough music I like in the past I could be into rap for the rest of my life I only listen to music from the past you know if there is even there isn't a future of the journey is really depressing seeing what some WorldStarHipHop today and I'm finally like agreeing with the cranky old man on flat TV who complained you know hope is dead it's such a that you know ever Nath said that 20 years ago or something like already 20 years ago people were saying rap is dead you know rap is almost a uniquely backward-looking art form like already on wu-tang second album there are references back to their first album as being the good old days you know and I mean there's being a lost era you know I mean there's this perpetual sense of the Yanis telogen of the past escaping the the irredeemable quality of the lost greatness of the past and the lost and it's mostly like 25 year olds rapping about stuff they did when they were 15 - this is really weird you know past verses president president they have more money now there's not enough to rap about it well you look at you look at little B he already was famous and successful at 16 I think you know his his first hit song the song about his shoes he did this rap song just about shoes and that was a hit I think he was 16 so he's doing all this stuff about being broke and being a crack dealer and stuff so that was when you were 15 and a half like it's just from those six months you know first it song came out because after that what you know and and there are rappers you who've been up front about that talking about what uh you know what time with their lives they're they're rapping about and how sometimes it is very specific I think what the game he names the the brand of shoes he was wearing during his own very brief time of being in gang banging he like he had think it was like one summer he was like yes the year I bought the Air Max 95 that was the one year when I was really involved with gang violence and you know whatever you know and that's that's what his whole career is based on yeah anyway story this is this a digression but yeah there's there's the nature of what's going on in the genre what's going on in the art form and then there's the nature of what's going on in your own life and how those things how those things fit together like for me when I was a child not a teenager when I was a child I respond in such a big way to Chris Rock's comedy just on Saturday Night Live terms of the racial tension of what was going to run on so after seven it was not as raw you know it's what he does stand-up right but like Chris Rock had this comedic Garrett called NAT X like you know like Malcolm X NAT X right like Nat Turner and Malcolm X this kind of joke revolutionary character but to me I can remember absolutely being on the floor in stitches laughing at that that was so funny and to me it addressed you know like the racial tensions and the political tensions and the revolutionary tensions in my school in my neighborhood in my own family you know what I mean because my parents were phony revolutionaries in their way too and I did you know the the high school I graduated from it was maybe majority black maybe it was 45% black but black people were very very much that I have to mention it cuz I'm Canadian they're not very many neighborhoods Canada you know they're like that and so on but yeah I mean there's that level on which the struggle in rap and the political tensions in rap and there was like a whole new genre of I can't breathe rap you know a Tamir rice shooting rap you know what those those shootings those did really produce a lot of a lot of great tracks including by older artists you know there were kind of old fossils in semi-retirement beanie sigel beanie sigel made politically conscious rap I think for the more or less the first time in his life beanie sigel came out of retirement to do tracks on that so that that's an example where the genre is still alive and still as that still has that edge to it and so on for sure this is actually coming before it's at least come before on live stream we know a lot of my professors they really like respected the fact that listen to rap and ass so it is something I don't know at least other middle-class white people can can show you could show your respect yeah so somebody said no more positive rap makes it to mainstream it's all done down low IQ rap so there may be some truth to that but from from what for my experience I think that has been the case in the past as well yeah like when and watching MTV in 1995 it was all crap on it yeah one of the first songs that I was introduced to was from a friend of mine who is probably a bad influence on me when I was like I don't know starting middle school was that song Colt 45 colt 45 and two zigzags baby that's all we need yeah so it's it's really inappropriate but anyway it's not a great you know it's not great quality it's just talking about getting stoned in a park right and also like a really popular song when I was that age was like our Kellie's remix to ignition yes these aren't great songs and also as I mentioned that Eminem was huge where I was from this huge misconception that raps started off political and got less political with time I'm sorry but I remember the original Eric gentlemanlike 1979 to 1980 for most those songs were about put your hands up in the air I'm around like you just don't care that was what God you know that was what got ready but those are the dominant song and we just heard boy I put it in a video too right we went back and checked like what's the truth bust a move you know that's that's not completely meaningless but yeah sure in terms of what was mainstream and what was successful in every era I mean I guess we really just have the one example of Chuck D and Public Enemy which you know and that's music it doesn't age that well it doesn't I mean I'm I'm sorry but I don't think a lot of people listen to Chuck D while they're riding in their car or riding on the bus or whatever I mean it has an H that well whereas bust-a-move really has and by the way a let's song you just mentioned remix to ignition it holds up amazingly well I've heard I've heard new cover versions of that track that still hold up you know like new you know new renditions of it so musically some of the shallow pop stuff ages really well but like no I mean there's definitely a rose-colored glasses effect of looking back and wanting to pretend that hip-hop was integrally about politics and that it somehow only lately become dumbed down you know no I mean you know Rob base and DJ EZ rock it was about nothing man you know it was about having a good time that was it you know I think the new me goes music is going to age very well and that's what's on the mainstream right now it's maybe like 20% of the music that gets put out on the radio that survives that actually ages well but to me it's only just these last couple of years that I felt like a cranky old man that way I think just five years ago I could really relate to what was going on on WorldStarHipHop or on the hot 97 or whatever you want to take that wasn't hard for me but it's really just the last couple of years that yeah rap to me I really feel like these cranky old man on glad TV saying this isn't even in rap music him I never thought I'd be in that because until quite recently I did stay current I was downloading every new mixtape from djy towel rest in peace tgy towel is now dead and by the way he died vegan he actually had some posts up saying that he went vegan and simple food so I wonder if he went vegan on doctor's orders because I noticed he went vegan and then died not long thereafter but regardless DJ white I will put up mixtapes but I was listening to you know uh txl I was downloading and keeping current with new hip hop a lot of which is sort of mean like you know members of wu-tang Raekwon is still putting out new art you know some of them are older guys but still putting out new and I didn't think I would ever be in the position of being a cranky old man who's not connected to what's going on now in hip-hop but it has it has finally happened so yeah we'll see what's next I mean you know there's this quote that's been you know used by 50 cent in other rappers and going times the realest thing you can do is have a drum pee but nothing put a drum beat I think there's a sense in which hip hop will never die but I mean jazz never died doesn't mean hear it on the radio it doesn't mean you you know doesn't mean it's mainstream anymore can disappear from the mainstream without dying you know real quick anecdote on that I met a distant relative of mine once so I don't know she's my cousin three times removed or something I don't even know how I'm related this girl but I met this girl and she's from the Jewish side of my family I never met her again never met her before never did that's the only time I ever talked to her and I sat down and met with her and you know she seemed good-looking and intelligent and we kind of talked about some stuff and we sat down and the other adults were at the table so you know some kind of family banquet dinner type of thing and I don't even think there was much of a pretext out of the blue she just went on this rant where she said she claimed that rap music was not real music and it takes absolutely no skill and that anybody can do it and so on I know a lot of people heard that I know a lot of people that grew up with a lot of the rel sin that I had literally never heard that before my life not even once so at that time the school I was at I was still in primary school we did have some black people but let's say less than 10% of people but we had a lot of Hispanics Chileans South Americans we had we had people from all over the world with Koreans but you know it was a multicultural school but it wasn't predominantly black last we just won president I had never once hurt anyone not even on the schoolyard suggests that rap music is not real you know he never once you have the environment I grew up I grew up in downtown Toronto but at that no it's just it's just you know I think that's never seen downtown of the suburbs I did not grow up ever ever hearing it said that somehow rap was less of a real genre of music than I don't know country music or rock music or anything else and there were obviously the type of rap music that was popular with children it's different from but there there was there were rap there were back there was cassette tapes literally being handed around the schoolyard and people getting into 2 Live Crew and day club abortions and you know some of them being you know joke rap bands you know but still in the Beastie Boys of course Beastie Boys ruled the schoolyard is no no doubt about that you know but Buster this girl right so I'm sitting and I am flabbergasted and that's him I didn't think of myself as a fan of hip-hop I just thought himself as a normal kid same way like I wouldn't have said like I'm like what are you a fan of Sega in video games all kids were playing video games all kids listened to hip-hop I didn't think I was more of a fan of it than other people you know and I was just amazed at this and I you know I tried to you know in Socratic dialogue form again express my my amazement at this but she you know she was not hearing it and you know I think I said today I'm sorry my own argument I'm it's not that interesting but I said you know why is it that you recognize an electric guitar as a musical instrument but when you plug in a turntable and scratch it you don't recognize that's like what you know what is it well free was I'd never thought about that I'd never rehearsed it like for some people had that that conversation 10 20 times and the usually my dad sat there just kind of smirking in his sense of smoke superiority over with her he didn't say anything but then afterwards I said can you believe that look y-you know why would anyone say that you know I didn't even accuse her of racism right now didn't say that these were these were all white relatives Imam of the way but anyway well white and Jewish white and or Jewish whether you categorize Jewish as white or what is Jewish but anyway uh and what my father said to me really stuck with me it was more wise than anything else he ever said about hip hop or many other topics let me say he said it's always like that in every new art form whenever there's a new art form people first refuse to recognize it as ours and that's totally beside the point because the question is on a case-by-case basis is this a great work of art like you know it's not worth questioning is this a song or is this music that's the wrong question the question is about particular works of art particular artists is this a great work of art okay so shout out to my dad rested you want a mom yeah maybe maybe we're gonna view migos in that light ten years from now yeah it was a true work of art migos Freezone maybe maybe the very brief period of greatness from riff raff no but not me goes I got a I got a draw the line somewhere all right guys we're back to the live stream
what's your girlfriend's stance on rap and hip-hop music so the first email I sent to you was about the music in your videos not only the hip-hop music but also the video game music kid chameleon and toejam and Earl so yeah that was one of the first things that I asked that sort of suggested that you're older than you are you're 24 years old but you actually picked up on the cultural references both in terms of the video game music and the rap music and you and you knew that and you know also this kind of a famous thing within our relationship but even though there was nothing flirtatious about what she said in that email I absolutely picked up on the sub-basement of barely repressed sexual interests that was beneath the edifice of polite conversation about rap music via the first private email you sent to me was indeed a bell rapping you were asking you think you just wanted to track down some of the tracks you wanted to recorded them and so on yeah so you I mean you could talk about this I've already made videos about you know me and rap music I made a couple how did you first start listen hip hop and without you know without naming names we're not pointing the finger at anyone well actually I wanted to say that that email to you I drafted it like three different sizes racially send it to you so I really did cut down a lot of stuff that I was saying about how important your channel was to just my life like how it wasn't in the earlier drafts it wasn't there was more flirtatious material there was more flattering to over there's more talking about what my channel might say it's interesting yeah I mean obviously I never read those emails I read the final great I mean yeah you guys really oh um yeah so how I first got into hip-hop I I don't know I mean I'm from I'm from sort of Detroit I'm from one hour away from Detroit so I don't want to say that I'm actually from Detroit because I'm not from you know from getting from the ghetto but yeah it was really popular really popular in my hometown and Eminem was from Detroit it was probably the first rapper that I ever heard I remember I remember for me there was a turning point in my life I guess it was around the year 2000 when I was in a shopping mall in Canada and it's a standard it's a standard crappy uninteresting shopping mall in Canada the the Eaton Centre was something like that or Sears you know but as a mainstream brand like that and I was I was looking for clothes but I remember I was looking for those that didn't have a little leather that's what I remember maybe I'm wrong but that's what I remember and they started playing what was just ten years earlier considered really hardcore offensive hip-hop you know anything they're playing hip-hop that I can remember it seemed like just five years earlier mainstream radio didn't play like only the college station played or only like specialized on after 11 p.m. played it was like this is now being played as background music at the mall you know in in a clothing store so yeah I really lived through that where rap music made the transition from being something it lists it and provocative and you know kind of banned to being some of us just in the background like wallpaper that's so while it widely accepted that nobody thinks twice about it you know them abuzz so but did you have a period of your life where you listened to country music or something before wrapping you know no I never listened to country music but you know I did growing up my mom played a lot of music from the 60s and 70s and so I grew up with a lot of Motown a lot of like earlier today you were saying white people music oh yeah I want the one that I mentioned was Creedence Clearwater Revival but Queen Pink Floyd like Led Zeppelin those were things that I really started listening to it in an early age yeah and I think I told you when I was like 10 the first band that I really was into was cake you know but the other influence is video game music right so like I'd say like wait for me as a kid I'm simplifying slightly there was basically no guitar music that really mattered to me I was never into Pink Floyd or heavy metal and by the way a lot of kids when I grew up worshipped Guns and Roses which you know they're there but you know when I was a kid it was not ironic you know what I mean they worshipped guns Rosen they wanted to yep the Seattle San Nirvana and those guys right yeah so I I was never part of any of that which is interesting no me of course is a sites of information to say like guitar music and Rome you said no inflows about of course I just some of it reached me because it was so so ubiquitous but really I was never a fan of than I was never into that I was never into you to like u2 was huge for my generation of this kind of crap nothing it was never into I was never really into into white people music but when I look back now I wasn't a Sol Sol Sol is slightly more serious than most at Motown some Motown his soul some soul was mode you know they are not totally separate I was into soul I was into jazz I was into blues all right so that's you know again that's obviously African American dominated genres of music but also I was really influenced by a video game music so we listen to the other day some train of thought brought it up I put on the music from level one to our tight on the Sega Master System you know what I mean just like this is banging this is like the opening to to a rap track you know what I mean but it's definitely true in terms of the simplicity and the beat and just the format like yeah a lot of the the video game music I grew up with and so you wouldn't know this I was I'm not really old enough to notice but I had a friend and his father still had the Commodore 64 so Congress Eva that's really guys who were 10 years older than me who would mean to that I'm too young to mean that but this is this one from habit and converses for ludie goes in those the the the the music chip and it's called the sia to chip s ID the sid chip right now on youtube if you just do like sid chip c64 music there are all these youtube channels that that collect this stuff but commerce 64 their video games took a while to load and they had loading music i swear to god like in terms of probably like at a really early age forming my taste for hip hop you've got these banging chip tunes on the commodore 64 and that was it and there was nothing else to distract you there just be like like the screen would say loading and it's banging video game music which was better than like Nintendo music you know it was better than the simple you know video game converse 64 had a chipset that was a few steps up in terms of the sophistication of what what they could do with it musically so yeah probably hearing the loading tunes on Congress 64 and here because you think about the amount of repetition for some of the video game music as a child sega master system and then later Sega Genesis Sega Genesis at a really strong base like the base ship this is a nice fuzzy horror bass sound Sega Genesis music probably drew me into rap although as I say I already would have been flirting with the blues and jazz and soul and some stuff like that but yeah the final leap to being a rap fan you know was was hard to take because so much of the music was so outrageous ly meaningless you know like we had this so we looked the other day at some current hip-hop because a lot of well look he's like a listen to a little hip-hop but some of the other but listen to is five years old or something you know what I mean like it's not it's not classic or something but it's not a said in camo yesterday but most of us do that now the internet with the internet you know like you know you filter what you want to listen to you select what you think is gonna be good um but yeah sure if you like a track you overlook the extent to which the lyrics are meaningless but when you're a little bit leery you don't know you think who is this artists nurse you haven't heard before as a genre yeah unlike blues music because that was what I knew I already knew blues you know and I already knew jazzed are a new soul those songs are about something and normally the take boats out see what they're about and you go from there and like what like a great great track by Raekwon is called snake pond it's not about a snake it's not about a pond it's just a bunch of death threats it's a standard gangster rap great track love that driver here's another called ice water it's not about ice water you know like you know whoo tang is is a great example that were the relationship between the title and the chorus and the lyric there's none it's completely abstract right so for me definitely there was a kind of process of reconciling myself to the reckless abstract meaninglessness of what what goes on in the genre that was that was why it took me so long in a sense to become a fan of retinues I could say yeah somebody asked Osen or likes again so did you get it more into the rap / hip-hop music after a meeting eyes'll I don't think so when I first went off to college that was probably when I first started listening to more rap in hip-hop because trying to listen to it at my parents house I would encounter a lot of criticism and I guess maybe rightly so you know I'm a white girl from the suburbs of Detroit maybe I shouldn't be really into hip-hop or rap like but you know it is something I like listening to but yeah before I went off to college I listened to a lot more um alternative and rock music indeed but yeah when I went off to college I first started listening to like souls of mischief and mu Tang Clan and the notorious b.i.g Tupac like thing like I was looking just like the intro like intro to rap and hip-hop and then I just got more into it since then since then the other the other real difference new generations is just the cost of listening to music right so for me when I started University music was still something I had to pay for yeah and like when wu-tang put out a two CD album I can remember not when it was new a couple years after it came out picking everything iron flag by wu-tang and like let's say in Canadian dollars it was probably twenty five dollars or something it's like in the States maybe 20 or whatever 1999 or something that was a lot of money and like half of the tracks are garbage even if you're booting your loot Eggman come on you kidding me like you like every track of the album but that was a huge barrier to entry that was a big big difference and now fundamentally most rap or all rap is free if you decide to buy an album it's kind of a voluntary because you can hear it on YouTube you know if you don't you don't pirate it or whatever you can you can stay in the loop absolutely for free that's a huge huge difference and I really got into buying rap music when the CD was dying so at that time in Toronto so I remember buying secondhand ODB n-word please but ODB probably paid you know three dollars and 99 cents for Canadian or something because there was this period of time when CD as a medium was dying and all the store were unloading they were getting rid of their CDs and CD collectors were getting rid of it so that was for some when I was buying hip-hop but because we at the university radio station I I got to hear a lot of rap music before I really owned any justify university right I'm back in those days reading and writing essays I was listening to long long hours of radio so yeah via radio and in Canada we had the infamous much music that wasn't much music was in its heyday much music was our competitor to MTV and it's now garbage it's been garbage for years but back at that time it had this period of a couple of years it was really strong and they had they had quite good hip-hop coverage so you know I mean compared to MTV or what have you so yeah before I was actually paying money for it and then we entered this wonderful wonderful era when artists have to go into debt to release their music for free and not make a nickel or dime out of it so yeah what's wonderful for the listeners in some ways harder than ever for the artists right yeah yeah well I'll ask you a tough question I ask you tough question I'm 38 I got a four year old daughter around the time my daughter was born shortly after her birth ash I deleted all the rap music of my hard drive and I thought okay for the next 10 years I'm not gonna be listening to rap music agree this is built on death threats and boasting and you know who owns a bigger car and who stabbed more people over a bag of crack and whatever you know this is this is what the Charter is largely about right but I mean you know when you look at the future you're now 24 so coming up is is 34 and so on you know what would you or how you know do you see rap being you know consistently part of your adult life or what and where do you think where do you think it goes because we don't we don't go to nightclubs I mean oh okay if I were to ask you do you think in the next 10 years you're gonna go to a lot of live gigs and nightclubs or album or at least parties for rap I think neither one of us sees that we could go back to Canada we will see a little bee you know little bee is gonna perform live in Victoria I'm sure he's done it before he'll do it again but you know that's that's really not part of our lives it's really rap as a recording art you know that's part of us when you look at the next 10 years what do you say you're going to open open a vegan rap rap based on what we just saw in WorldStarHipHop the other day I don't think I don't think it'll play a huge role in the future of my you know but um yeah music yeah yeah it seems pretty bad but there are some artists that I that I am still interested in and whatever they come up with next your old Droog Jacob so yeah I think I think I would probably still listen to it I love music all kinds of music I think we differ in that way I mean you you like you like other kinds of music as well but I do like all different genres so you know if we're with your daughter obviously I will not play grab music but I still feel confident that there's a lot of music that I could play around your thigh still really like yeah yeah but yeah I'm not sure we'll see we'll see how the genre progresses yeah I mean it could be I mean the thing is there's enough music I like in the past I could be into rap for the rest of my life I only listen to music from the past you know if there is even there isn't a future of the journey is really depressing seeing what some WorldStarHipHop today and I'm finally like agreeing with the cranky old man on flat TV who complained you know hope is dead it's such a that you know ever Nath said that 20 years ago or something like already 20 years ago people were saying rap is dead you know rap is almost a uniquely backward-looking art form like already on wu-tang second album there are references back to their first album as being the good old days you know and I mean there's being a lost era you know I mean there's this perpetual sense of the Yanis telogen of the past escaping the the irredeemable quality of the lost greatness of the past and the lost and it's mostly like 25 year olds rapping about stuff they did when they were 15 - this is really weird you know past verses president president they have more money now there's not enough to rap about it well you look at you look at little B he already was famous and successful at 16 I think you know his his first hit song the song about his shoes he did this rap song just about shoes and that was a hit I think he was 16 so he's doing all this stuff about being broke and being a crack dealer and stuff so that was when you were 15 and a half like it's just from those six months you know first it song came out because after that what you know and and there are rappers you who've been up front about that talking about what uh you know what time with their lives they're they're rapping about and how sometimes it is very specific I think what the game he names the the brand of shoes he was wearing during his own very brief time of being in gang banging he like he had think it was like one summer he was like yes the year I bought the Air Max 95 that was the one year when I was really involved with gang violence and you know whatever you know and that's that's what his whole career is based on yeah anyway story this is this a digression but yeah there's there's the nature of what's going on in the genre what's going on in the art form and then there's the nature of what's going on in your own life and how those things how those things fit together like for me when I was a child not a teenager when I was a child I respond in such a big way to Chris Rock's comedy just on Saturday Night Live terms of the racial tension of what was going to run on so after seven it was not as raw you know it's what he does stand-up right but like Chris Rock had this comedic Garrett called NAT X like you know like Malcolm X NAT X right like Nat Turner and Malcolm X this kind of joke revolutionary character but to me I can remember absolutely being on the floor in stitches laughing at that that was so funny and to me it addressed you know like the racial tensions and the political tensions and the revolutionary tensions in my school in my neighborhood in my own family you know what I mean because my parents were phony revolutionaries in their way too and I did you know the the high school I graduated from it was maybe majority black maybe it was 45% black but black people were very very much that I have to mention it cuz I'm Canadian they're not very many neighborhoods Canada you know they're like that and so on but yeah I mean there's that level on which the struggle in rap and the political tensions in rap and there was like a whole new genre of I can't breathe rap you know a Tamir rice shooting rap you know what those those shootings those did really produce a lot of a lot of great tracks including by older artists you know there were kind of old fossils in semi-retirement beanie sigel beanie sigel made politically conscious rap I think for the more or less the first time in his life beanie sigel came out of retirement to do tracks on that so that that's an example where the genre is still alive and still as that still has that edge to it and so on for sure this is actually coming before it's at least come before on live stream we know a lot of my professors they really like respected the fact that listen to rap and ass so it is something I don't know at least other middle-class white people can can show you could show your respect yeah so somebody said no more positive rap makes it to mainstream it's all done down low IQ rap so there may be some truth to that but from from what for my experience I think that has been the case in the past as well yeah like when and watching MTV in 1995 it was all crap on it yeah one of the first songs that I was introduced to was from a friend of mine who is probably a bad influence on me when I was like I don't know starting middle school was that song Colt 45 colt 45 and two zigzags baby that's all we need yeah so it's it's really inappropriate but anyway it's not a great you know it's not great quality it's just talking about getting stoned in a park right and also like a really popular song when I was that age was like our Kellie's remix to ignition yes these aren't great songs and also as I mentioned that Eminem was huge where I was from this huge misconception that raps started off political and got less political with time I'm sorry but I remember the original Eric gentlemanlike 1979 to 1980 for most those songs were about put your hands up in the air I'm around like you just don't care that was what God you know that was what got ready but those are the dominant song and we just heard boy I put it in a video too right we went back and checked like what's the truth bust a move you know that's that's not completely meaningless but yeah sure in terms of what was mainstream and what was successful in every era I mean I guess we really just have the one example of Chuck D and Public Enemy which you know and that's music it doesn't age that well it doesn't I mean I'm I'm sorry but I don't think a lot of people listen to Chuck D while they're riding in their car or riding on the bus or whatever I mean it has an H that well whereas bust-a-move really has and by the way a let's song you just mentioned remix to ignition it holds up amazingly well I've heard I've heard new cover versions of that track that still hold up you know like new you know new renditions of it so musically some of the shallow pop stuff ages really well but like no I mean there's definitely a rose-colored glasses effect of looking back and wanting to pretend that hip-hop was integrally about politics and that it somehow only lately become dumbed down you know no I mean you know Rob base and DJ EZ rock it was about nothing man you know it was about having a good time that was it you know I think the new me goes music is going to age very well and that's what's on the mainstream right now it's maybe like 20% of the music that gets put out on the radio that survives that actually ages well but to me it's only just these last couple of years that I felt like a cranky old man that way I think just five years ago I could really relate to what was going on on WorldStarHipHop or on the hot 97 or whatever you want to take that wasn't hard for me but it's really just the last couple of years that yeah rap to me I really feel like these cranky old man on glad TV saying this isn't even in rap music him I never thought I'd be in that because until quite recently I did stay current I was downloading every new mixtape from djy towel rest in peace tgy towel is now dead and by the way he died vegan he actually had some posts up saying that he went vegan and simple food so I wonder if he went vegan on doctor's orders because I noticed he went vegan and then died not long thereafter but regardless DJ white I will put up mixtapes but I was listening to you know uh txl I was downloading and keeping current with new hip hop a lot of which is sort of mean like you know members of wu-tang Raekwon is still putting out new art you know some of them are older guys but still putting out new and I didn't think I would ever be in the position of being a cranky old man who's not connected to what's going on now in hip-hop but it has it has finally happened so yeah we'll see what's next I mean you know there's this quote that's been you know used by 50 cent in other rappers and going times the realest thing you can do is have a drum pee but nothing put a drum beat I think there's a sense in which hip hop will never die but I mean jazz never died doesn't mean hear it on the radio it doesn't mean you you know doesn't mean it's mainstream anymore can disappear from the mainstream without dying you know real quick anecdote on that I met a distant relative of mine once so I don't know she's my cousin three times removed or something I don't even know how I'm related this girl but I met this girl and she's from the Jewish side of my family I never met her again never met her before never did that's the only time I ever talked to her and I sat down and met with her and you know she seemed good-looking and intelligent and we kind of talked about some stuff and we sat down and the other adults were at the table so you know some kind of family banquet dinner type of thing and I don't even think there was much of a pretext out of the blue she just went on this rant where she said she claimed that rap music was not real music and it takes absolutely no skill and that anybody can do it and so on I know a lot of people heard that I know a lot of people that grew up with a lot of the rel sin that I had literally never heard that before my life not even once so at that time the school I was at I was still in primary school we did have some black people but let's say less than 10% of people but we had a lot of Hispanics Chileans South Americans we had we had people from all over the world with Koreans but you know it was a multicultural school but it wasn't predominantly black last we just won president I had never once hurt anyone not even on the schoolyard suggests that rap music is not real you know he never once you have the environment I grew up I grew up in downtown Toronto but at that no it's just it's just you know I think that's never seen downtown of the suburbs I did not grow up ever ever hearing it said that somehow rap was less of a real genre of music than I don't know country music or rock music or anything else and there were obviously the type of rap music that was popular with children it's different from but there there was there were rap there were back there was cassette tapes literally being handed around the schoolyard and people getting into 2 Live Crew and day club abortions and you know some of them being you know joke rap bands you know but still in the Beastie Boys of course Beastie Boys ruled the schoolyard is no no doubt about that you know but Buster this girl right so I'm sitting and I am flabbergasted and that's him I didn't think of myself as a fan of hip-hop I just thought himself as a normal kid same way like I wouldn't have said like I'm like what are you a fan of Sega in video games all kids were playing video games all kids listened to hip-hop I didn't think I was more of a fan of it than other people you know and I was just amazed at this and I you know I tried to you know in Socratic dialogue form again express my my amazement at this but she you know she was not hearing it and you know I think I said today I'm sorry my own argument I'm it's not that interesting but I said you know why is it that you recognize an electric guitar as a musical instrument but when you plug in a turntable and scratch it you don't recognize that's like what you know what is it well free was I'd never thought about that I'd never rehearsed it like for some people had that that conversation 10 20 times and the usually my dad sat there just kind of smirking in his sense of smoke superiority over with her he didn't say anything but then afterwards I said can you believe that look y-you know why would anyone say that you know I didn't even accuse her of racism right now didn't say that these were these were all white relatives Imam of the way but anyway well white and Jewish white and or Jewish whether you categorize Jewish as white or what is Jewish but anyway uh and what my father said to me really stuck with me it was more wise than anything else he ever said about hip hop or many other topics let me say he said it's always like that in every new art form whenever there's a new art form people first refuse to recognize it as ours and that's totally beside the point because the question is on a case-by-case basis is this a great work of art like you know it's not worth questioning is this a song or is this music that's the wrong question the question is about particular works of art particular artists is this a great work of art okay so shout out to my dad rested you want a mom yeah maybe maybe we're gonna view migos in that light ten years from now yeah it was a true work of art migos Freezone maybe maybe the very brief period of greatness from riff raff no but not me goes I got a I got a draw the line somewhere all right guys we're back to the live stream