2007 Love--Black Nerds and White Gs

Might as well start in on the best of 2007.

This may also be a "things I love about Chicago" list as well, just cause I've been thinking about doing something like that for a minute.

Musique:

Dude N Em--Watch My Feet --how often can you make 150 BPM hip hop, introduce a new dance style, rep your hometown and get signed? These mo-fos make it look easy. Plus they wear heavy metal spike wristbands.

Enur and Natasja--Calabria 2007 --how often can you be one of the best dancehall DJs in the world, be from Denmark, be overwhelmingly revered in JA, and get on hip-hop stations in the US? Did I mention that the main beat is a single sax note?

Kanye--Kane did it agin. In his own words, he got more pop, more big and more black. It'd be hard to argue with him on that one. Can't Tell Me Nothing is a fave, but Stronger is solid and Good Life grows on ya. Do your thing baby.

Lupe--Superstar is the st-hit. Plus check out youtube for his freestyle of The Cool ("lupe cool freestyle"). Chilling. And don't tell me shit about slam poets--especially if they still sound like Alan Ginsburg. One of the few (two) albums I bought.

Band of Horses--Funeral --It's hard for us white folks to overcome our ennui long enough to really bang shit these days, but I love the Willie Nelson-esque way baCK on the beat lyrics. Depressing but nails the shit out of it.

Cool Kids--Black Mags --What ever happened to just having fun? Ask the cool kids.

MIA--Boyz --I can do without the post-whatever pseudo-communal politics, but she sure knows her way around a futuristic Indonesian banger. Plus, probably the only member of the indie-rock world in good standing that I'd even consider fucking--Marc Jacobs endorsement nonwithstanding (hey, I don't expect perfection).

Timbo--Shock Value --Three or four bangers on that puppy. Just hope they weren't stolen from Arabic pop samples without clearance. Plus he did the beat for..

50 Cent--AYO Technology

Lil Mama--Lip Gloss --What part of kick don't you understand? I take mental sound engineering notes every time I hear it. Nuf said.

Rihanna--Umbrella

The Fratellis--Chelsea Dagger --White! But they're from Ireland so it's likely they escaped the Puritanicanical crush. Is it really so simple that if you're white you're going to sound uphhfy unless you overtly want to fuck? If that's the case--count me in.

I'll give honorable mentions to Duffle Bag Boy by Player's Circle and Whatever You Want by Nicole Scherzinger, just cause they're so 60s stone soul stomp'd and fuckable respectively.


Cultcha:

What I liked most about 07 was the solidification of the whole black nerd, white g thing. The world really is unifying right before our eyes.

It's not just Kanye doing a remix with Fall Out Boy, but how honest he is about it.

>Since they ain’t Black
>When they get money they don’t ball out boy
>They just buy tight jeans till they nuts hang all out boy
>They figure they dress tight
>So we gon dress tighter
>He dress white, so we gon dress whiter

Some day us white folks will work our way up to the same level of immediacy and honesty.

Or maybe not.

It has not escaped me that a lot of this is germinating in the Chi. Kanye, Lupe, now Dude N Em (who can't really be called nerdy, xcept that they are self-consciously fun enough to get white luve) and the Cool Kids (who, but for their beats and vocal registers would be indie). (Juice, too, but he didn't put anything out this year--and he's too busy trying to be record label hard to express his true nerdness/intellect--even though all the real money's in being either a black nerd or a white g.)

And, of course, the original self-proclaimed wigger: Billy Wimsatt, who extolled the virtues of being a young white guy running around the ghetto, and encouraged suburban kids to move to the hood. (They are, but possibly not like Billy imagined.)

He was from the S. Side in Hyde Park, where the U of Chicago is. Where--very interestingly--Milton Friedman championed free markets and got called lots of names long before 100s of millions of Chinese had been lifted out of poverty by market reforms..

Is it all related?

I think absolutely.

Or rather, I think that there's nothing that's not true.

What it is, it is.

Geography being the same as anything else. What something looks like being as true as what it smells like, how it feels, or what it stands for.

East and West are the external, global representations of the two hemispheres of our minds.

And the middle easy--whoops, I mean the middle east--is where neurons and ideas come together to nurture and grow (Iraq was where some consider the biblical garden of Eden to be). Which makes it either heaven or hell, depending on how well tuned your shit is.

And it can just as easily be easy as hard. Depending on how knuckleheaded you/I/we R.

The web is our global mind. And it matters little what politicians tell the youth--if they have access to youtube, they'll want the future no matter what.

Wherever sex, the economy, personal growth is repressed, problems develop that overwhelm the controls put upon the desires. (Gotta name check the Catholic Church and Islam here, though most all of us do the damn thang.)

And, with a little REAL motherfucking faith..

(ie: that god/the universe loves you enough to make your strongest desires as motherfucking holy as your weakest ones.)

And a few minor economic tweaks..

(ie: letting prices on content float).

We should be able to deliver that shit we've all been dreaming on so long we don't even believe ourselves anymore.

Barack and his "purple" politics are a manifestation of the same thing: a hybrid.

The only thing that ain't up to snuff is business. Because it won't allow prices to float on it's most loving, most eastern and most loving creations: culture.

Us white folks are holding on tight. Hoping against hope that we'll all become nice enough, non-profit enough, or whatever that we won't have to give up on regulation--repression--and instead can think our way to a future that somehow FEELS more loving.

Instead of feeling our way to it, duh.

Which is impossible, of course.

No matter. There's not a dam built that's stronger than little old water.

And no matter how strong your cherry orchard, the aristocracy's days are numbered.
So get your licks in now as a middle management pimp. There will soon be scores of much richer, much more powerful artists who can use you to watch their books.

Hell, I could use you.

White G out.

E