Oh Word

No, That’s Racist

2009-07-03T08:17:33Z

I didn’t watch the BET awards on Sunday night but I did watch the coverage of it on Twitter. A lot of the people I follow were pissed all night with what BET was serving up. The overall sentiment: why can’t they just be better? Michael deserves better. We deserve better.

There were other people on Twitter who were mad at the BET Awards too. They weren’t even watching them but they were upset that names like Jamie Foxx, Neyo and Keith Sweat were taking over the list of Trending Topics on their Twitter.

When you watch an event while on Twitter you’re watching the event but you’re also watching the world watch the event and you’re also watching the world watching the world watch the event.

So on this particular evening some of the people watching the world watch the world watch the BET Awards noticed all these tweets from really angry white people. And so these people very quickly threw up a Tumblr site to log what they were seeing from others.

The url was http://omgblackpeople.tumblr.com/ If you go there now, you won’t find anything but a message from Tumblr saying they can’t find the page. The creators of the OMGBlackPeople site were told that Tumblr doesn’t condone “hate speech”. Apparently this includes a site documenting and exposing the hateful remarks of others. So just talking about racism, pointing out its existence is apparently hate speech! That phenomenon I was just talking about with Twitter, watching others watching something… Tumblr apparently clueless on that.

The site’s back up because they took the show over to Wordpress. I spoke with one of the site’s creators and he told me it was up for 15 hours on Tumblr before being shut down. After the shutdown Tumblr was totally unresponsive to any of the site creator’s attempts to explain the situation and get the site back online.

Of course there’s a certain irony in the fact that both sides on Twitter agreed that the BET Awards and its performers were a ridiculous embarrassment. But to make that assessment as the omg tweeters did without watching, without secretly praying for some kind of dignity to show up – that’s racist. And to feel that your insular, individual vision of the world is more valid than a nation sharing an experience, well that’s fucking racist too. Not to mention an unsustainable fantasy.

I changed the focus of this site because I came to recognize that hip-hop culture is as close to mainstream culture as we have these days. Is it possible that the hip-hop generation is the new silent majority? We elected a presient and we shift the Trending Topics on Twitter.. whether either of these displays have meaning remains to be seen but those who want to own the culture and keep it whitewashed are delusional.

Das Racist Weekend in NYC

2009-07-03T07:10:07Z

Carlos Santana / Juelz Santana
Hannah Montana / Tony Montana
What’s really good? / What’s really food? / What’s really hood?
Watch the gap / Mind the gap / Fall into the Gaaaaap

Das Racist have been catching a lot of attention off their infectious Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell but they bring a lot more than that to the table. These are two smart, funny brown-skinned dudes who know how to get retarded in more than one sense of the word. I used to marvel at some of the insane language deconstruction in the dub records of Lee “Scratch” Perry and there are some similar oh shit moments in Chicken and Meat (see the video here in the box to the right) only there’s also a flow to the incantations here. Das Racist indulge in a giddy litany of words pairing and then tripling up items and phrases with common last names. And I hope this good experimental shit is part of the future of rap music.

When Victor suddenly breaks into some lines from KRS-One’s Black Cop it’s just part of the pastiche. Then skipping off to a favorite Scratch Perry type trope “I’m gonna buy me a spaceship.” then more wordplay “Space Races. Das Space Racist!” before the return to the KRS quote “Overseer, overseer, overseer-officer-officer-officer. Why you want to put me in a coffin sir?”

Honestly, who knows what to make of this shit but there are some wonderful fragments. It confounds expectations and it’s still a jam.

Come out and see these dudes play this weekend in NYC. They’ll be at the Annex Friday night and at an all ages show Webster Hall on Sunday afternoon. I’ll be at the Friday night show so say what’s up if you come through.

More info and music at their MySpace page.

Bonus Beat 1: Byron points out great excerpt from Voice interview with Das Racist in which the whole street cred question itself is skewered.

Bonus Beat 2: When I first saw this video I decided this was the best shit ever. Then I discovered it was directed by this dude Jordan Fish who once saved the ohword.com domain long before there was a site here by lending me $10. At the time he was a teenager and I was in my mid-20s and already married but lacking the $10 to renew my domain. Salute that man!

Excuse me while I whip this out: RapGaydar.com

2009-07-02T18:17:24Z

Your weirdest dreams are about to be fulfilled. http://rapgaydar.com/

Michael Jackson Tributes

2009-06-26T19:15:03Z

Just a place to collect some of the remembering, commentary, tributes, sights and sounds that have been going up.

The image to the right is titled “Michael Jackson” by Pierre Ethier. In stark black and white, the trademark smooth-criminal fedora sits alone on a flower covered floor. It seems a fitting elegy to the King of Pop even though it was posted last week — before his passing. Many had been missing Michael Jackson for years already.

I’ve excerpted just tiny bits from some of the below posts but you need to go visit them and read them in their entirety.

Please add your own links in the comments if you’ve seen other gems out there.

Reflections

Andrew Sullivan – Thinking About Michael

There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child.

Jeff Chang – Morning’s End

Many of his most affecting performances were about distance and displacement, the desire to be somewhere else, the inability to return to a lost past.

Brandon Soderberg – Michael Jackson, 1958-2009

A kind example of Jackson’s outre celebrity is the awesomely confident and personal but very out-of-place sketches found inside of Thriller. That a guy of his stature would even put these uncool sketches of cartoon him and cartoon McCartney battling over a girl, a kind of Daniel Johnston retelling of Thriller’s “The Girl Is Mine”, is illustrative of Jackson’s desire to express his vision in as many round-about and weird ways as possible: Turning into a cougar, grabbing his crotch, bleaching his skin, making paranoid pop masterpieces, releasing some oddly personal drawings to the world. These drawings feel like his work, specific and general, sincere and direct but mysterious and private too. I guess that’s all also a definition of mythic.

Mouse, Classical Geek Theatre – The Michael Jackson I Knew

Michael Jackson was weak and plainly addicted to painkillers, but he gave his best smiling performance every time he’d walk to court in front of those cameras. Even in the fog of addiction Michael’s business instinct understood the importance of saving face during those perp walks. But once inside, free from the spying eyes of television, he looked like any other person who wished he didn’t have to be in court that day.

Ta-Nehisi Coates – Remembering the Time

I remember when this came out, and all the kids who’d been lucky enough to stay up and see Friday Night Videos came to school bragging about it. You couldn’t get cable in Baltimore back then. Fools were like, “Yo, every time he took a step the stones would glow! And then when he went invisible the stones kept glowing!!” We thought Mike could save us all. We hadn’t heard BDP yet.

I chose this instead of the old joint because it makes me sad. Mike used to be beautiful. My sister Kelly just knew she was marrying him. And he danced so smooth and easy. I hate to think that what gave him that ability, was the same thing that ruined him. I remember watching this a few years back and thinking, “Goddamn, he’s still got it. Amazing.” Watch the end where he murders them b-boy style.

Hua Hsu – MJ R.I.P.

His distance made him an enigma: he was post-racial before anyone knew it; he was a vain, tragic hero; he suffered for our adoration. Or so we like to tell ourselves. Maybe he was just terminally lonely, maybe he actually was as ill as he claimed. But what is the allure of this narrative that we–fans, consumers, the media, American culture, etc–somehow destroyed Michael? What anxieties do we displace by projecting them onto his troubled face? I always think back to the interrogation scene from Three Kings. “What is the problem with Michael Jackson?” an Iraqi soldier asks a wayward American. “Your country make him chop up his face.” He did it to himself, the American protests, but his interrogator insists: “Michael Jackson is pop king of sick fucking country.” Maybe it is a “sick fucking country.” Maybe the idea of pop transcendence is deeply flawed. But we are truly the sick ones if we didn’t already know this, if we needed Michael Jackson to be our martyr. If we think we would trade it all for a world without Off the Wall or Thriller or “Butterflies.”

Mike Barthel – Michael Jackson

This is an unsatisfying resolution: there was no successful comeback, no redemption, no elder statesman period, not even a blaze of glory to go out on, just a middle-aged heart attack. But at the same time, we are in some sort of end times of all he represents. The world of celebrity journalism and gossip seems to have hit rock bottom, self-sustaining on a steady diet of nothing, running on the fumes of a system totally contained within their walls and unconnected with any sort of exterior fame. Megafame itself is mostly dead, a few old stars aside. Maybe this is a kind of year zero, too. Maybe something else will come along. Maybe it’s politics. God help us all.

Mark Richardson – Michael Jackson R.I.P.

Take away the music, and Michael Jackson’s life is just too sad to contemplate. Which is a very good argument for not taking away the music, ever.

Combat Jack – Michael Jackson – R.I.P. The King of Pop

DJ Sugabear kept shouting how Michael was back, and he was right. That video, simple as it looks now, kept us urban kids locked in, warned Hip Hop even, that it was too small to eff with Jackson’s talent. Little did I, did we know that “Billy Jean” was the harbinger for the tsunami that would be the Michael Jackson mania 2.0. As tough as I wanted to be, when me and some fellow students watched that famed “Motown 25″ special live in our dorm’s tv room, when Michael performed “Billy Jean” live for the first time, when nigga flipped how street dudes in New York were doing the moon walk, cat had me screaming out the “OHHH SHIT!” with the rest of them. This was the Reagen era in full swing, and damn if that performance didn’t feel like the Russians finally let fly a nuke.

Danyel Smith – Michael Jackson, The Greatest Star

Is the world grieving Michael Jackson, or mourning for a time when such earnest fandom was possible?

Music Mixes

T.R.O.Y. Blog presents Smooth Criminal on Beat Breaks, a mix of some classic Michael Jackson material with the rap classics that recycled them.

Trees for Breakfast digs up a 2004 mix by DJ Lt Dan called The King of What’s Poppin

Rhymefest speaks over at Fakeshore Drive calling Jackson, the King not just of Pop but of all Music. They’ve re-upped Rhymefest’s Man in the Mirror mix from late 2007 which I remember giving some spin when it came out.

DJ Jaycee put together this mix of early Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson The Soulful Years. Phonte just called it the “definitive MJ mixtape”

J.Period’s Michael Jackson Tribute

Videos

Three via Jay Smooth:

Jackson 5, “Walk on” Live on Tour in France 1972

Michael Jackson, James Brown and Prince On Stage Together

125th Street last night, fan’s tribute dance comes to an emotional end.

Back on Mermaid Avenue

2009-06-26T10:11:38Z

I have to say the Mermaid Parade was on my brain this week for two reasons. 1) This girl I went to elementary school with grew into a very buxom 30-something (like myself but a bit more buxom), and went to the parade and posted photos of herself on Facebook in a bikini top / see-thru wrap mermaid get-up. 2) People who photograph the Mermaid Parade and then post them on flickr is a frequently cited example in Clay Shirky’s excellent Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations which I’m almost done reading. I highly recommend this book on how society is changing in unexpected ways because of the proliferation of the web. Shirky is a great writer and a revelatory thinker, I’ve been enjoying watching him connect dots and ask the relevant questions. And yes that is an affiliate link.. I suggest you use it!

The thing I’ve been thinking about since that post is Mermaid Avenue, the Billy Bragg – Wilco collaborative album based on unused lyrics by the great Woody Guthrie. “Damn right, that’s an affiliate link!” he said with pride.

This is a cool collection of songs that almost never were and you can get a little taste for it here with “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key”, Billy Bragg singing with Natalie Merchant on back-up. The video is made by artist Johnny Smooth and according to the description it shows a bunch of his paintings because someone he knew wanted to buy one. Meanwhile his Etsy store is devoid of products at the moment or I’d be linking you over there, even with no affiliate link. That’s just how I roll.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T10:35:48Z

Rest In Power has become a trendy flip of the traditional R.I.P. but please keep it traditional when it comes to Michael. After all, he had all the power in the world but could never find any peace.

On a more positive note, Maseo has been streaming video of himself doing this live tribute mix to Michael Jackson all night. He looks like he’s about to pass out from exhaustion but check it out, he’s probably gonna keep it going into the wee hours.

Raye6 – Daddy (Dollar Van Demos)

2009-06-24T12:38:05Z

Ay yi yi! I didn’t see this video until the next day when Grand Good shared it or this would have made my mix of inappropriate Father’s Day music.

Raye 6 … more like Raye Sex, m i rite? She works her doe-eyed, mischievous smile, gold bracelets and gold fingernails. Her mohawk meets pompadour psychobilly hairdo lets you know she’s comfortable with your attention. A versatile singer, the bellowing moans and the breathy in-betweens both sound sweet.

In this vid, Raye sees her perfect prey in turned-on but uncomfortable, nice guy Neal. How nice is he? He won’t even agree to choke her when asked! The interaction is great and Raye needs to be applauded for her focus on delivering the Giving Him Something he Can Feel of Dollar Van Demos.

I loved this clip but the fact that it is the best Dollar Van Demo performance to date isn’t really saying much. These guys have a killer concept but aside from Raye and Poison Pen it’s been nothing but a sort of painful amateur hour and this is the first I’ve seen where the artist works the crowd and demonstrates some real showmanship. More like this one please! They don’t have to be lusty but they need to keep it lively, interactive with the passengers. It’s a very fun concept but if the videos aren’t fun it won’t stick.

Now excuse me while I watch Raye again.

some riders don’t know what they’re riding for

2009-06-23T05:01:13Z

Thomas Edison would have loved YouTube. I feel sure of this ever since learning via kottke that in 1899 Edison used his kinetograph to film a bunch of gnarly bicycle tricks.

Of course, Edison’s short films lacked a soundtrack. Also they lacked a Danny Macaskill.

Personally, I prefer the rhythm and motion of skateboard videos. I enjoy the juxtaposition of the skater’s awkward stance in contrast to their impossible athleticism.

Like the beginnings of plant life in WCW’s “Spring and All” skaters are All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stuff… Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed and yet perpetually they ride upon that moment as if it were a railing, that moment of now the stark dignity of entrance.

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

Photo “Spring and All” by flickr user shaletann.

mermaids

2009-06-22T17:19:22Z

The new site background image shows some mermaids at play from this years rain-drenched Mermaid Parade at Coney Island.

I found it at flickr this morning. Photographer Barry Yanowitz has a great set of photos posted from the event and all are Creative Commons licensed, meaning they can be used non-commercially as long as attribution/credit are given. Consider this post the attribution.

A few more shots from the set:

It’s been a long time, but I’m glad I left you

2009-06-22T08:14:32Z

Hey, it took me a while to get my shit together but it had to be done. In the meantime, other people scattered elsewhere and that actually had to be done too. Don’t think this site could have come back in any way other than an individual blog.

So, I apologize for the slowdown / absence caused by various crises. I’m extremely psyched about the fresh start but if you’re wondering where to find the other folks:

agent b -> left Oh Word before the slowdown to co-create the niche video game comedy site the minus world, then parlayed that into some kind of dream job at mammoth video game site IGN

RHS -> runs or helps run the t.r.o.y. blog powered by contributions from the golden age hip-hop forum at the message board philaflava.com. get your retro rap nerd needs met there. mp3 collections serve as bait + there’s the occasional illuminating drop by rhs who blogs there as Thun.

Sach O -> now part of a volunteer army of music critics dropping their opinions about hip-hop and indie rock at passion of the weiss.

Good night and god bless.