I'm What the Culture Is Feeling

July 28, 2024 9:51 AM

F.D. Signifier tells (one of) the full story of the Kendrick Lamar v Drake beef - a sociological and musical history perspective, if you have three hour-plus to spare.

(As it so happens, Todd in the Shadows also posted his 'review' of Not Like Us on yt this weekend as well, which offered a quick useful queer angle to the proceedings, but unfortunately overall proved the central thesis of F.D Signifier's video essay which deeply embeds the beef within Black American culture - with all the risks having to explain your internal community dynamics to the majoritarian and outsider audience included, as Josh Johnson related in his explanation of Kendrick's Pop-Out Juneteenth concert. The concert that also led to Jay Smooth to return to YouTube to drop a quick history video.)

Previously.

posted by cendawanita (21 comments total)

Thank you for these, I had watched Drake VS Kendrick Explained to White People by Josh Johnson and these look like they'll add more context. Plus, always good to see Jay Smooth.
posted by jessamyn at 9:58 AM on July 28 [10 favorites]

I think the Drake takedown is a long time coming. The Drakeification of rap has been horrible for the genre. It's sterile. It's boring. There's nothing there. I remember talking with my now boss 16ish years ago just when Drake was getting big about how fake Drake was cause I watched Degrassi and I knew Jimmy. And Drake was pretending he was serious and he was hard and he wasn't Jimmy but I still only saw Jimmy there. You can't go from that to pretending you're a serious artist. It's always just been a joke in my mind.
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:28 AM on July 28 [4 favorites]

I think Drake from about 2010 to 2015 had something. He absorbed a lot of it from other people (and got a lot of the rest from having producer 40 as a full-time partner) but that’s true of a lot of artists who become the standard-bearer for a trend and his was the introspective rap wave of the early 2010s. Unfortunately his whole lovelorn playboy/fuckboy schtick doesn’t wear well at 37, and the Meek Mill beef emboldened him too much to try to play to “the streets” and the hardcore rap audience which just makes him look phony, as does his need to hop on every regional bandwagon.

(okay that’s my history of Drake, I realize this post is about a much more in-depth one)
posted by atoxyl at 1:01 PM on July 28 [4 favorites]

I learned that Drake's Toronto accent was a put on, and that Drake hated the Toronto accent as a child actor.

Mostly, I am a jealous spectator that Hip Hop has just enough integrity to reclaim something of itself from the grips of wastoid capitalism; punk? Metal? Have not fared as well

I had asked myself these questions about Metallica and Green Day so long ago. Could even hardcore have survived, did it survive?

Kurt Cobain had struggled with these questions, even.

overall, the rock subcultures were too white, too vulnerable to appropriation to maintain something like Hip Hop culture.

Rock cultures would have had to explicitly embrace Anarcho-communism , or something similarly illegal and taboo in the USA, to affect the same pressures toward organization.
posted by eustatic at 3:20 PM on July 28 [2 favorites]

the rock subcultures were too white, too vulnerable to appropriation

I don't understand how 'too white' is valid grounds for an instant dismissal. Also, I think that a lot of Rock/Punk/Metal musicians have managed to maintain their integrity.
posted by coberh at 3:24 PM on July 28 [1 favorite]

I think the point in this context is that hip hop still has a sense of itself as belonging to, and being a voice of Black America, so there are still gatekeepers and tastemakers who don’t let just anybody come in and do anything with it.

But I do kind of think that the lesson of metal and punk for people concerned with underground integrity is really - the commercial peak will come and go and eventually the genre will belong to the die hard fans anyway.
posted by atoxyl at 4:10 PM on July 28 [3 favorites]

which just makes him look phony, as does his need to hop on every regional bandwagon.

Which is why I thought FDS's final choice near the end to loop it back to comparing Drake to J. Cole and how both had similar starts but one is acknowledged and respected for being real (it's not Drake) so interesting and so clearly obvious, yet no one else that I've watched in the last month or so even elaborated on that angle (usually only keeping J. Cole in their presentation as a player that led the incitement to the beef).
posted by cendawanita at 4:28 PM on July 28 [5 favorites]

I’ve been enthralled by the Kendrick/Drake battle for weeks, nay, months now. And I’ve watched scores of Youtube videos on the subject. FDS’s video is the single best overview of the beef, hands down. Kudos to him for making such clear and far-reaching analysis.
posted by Orthodox Humanoid at 5:21 PM on July 28 [7 favorites]

If you feel like NWA and Public Enemy, etc, are overlooked at the outset, he circles back later. Though I could have also done with a mention for ATCQ and other 'conscious' acts from earlier.

I appreciate FD; from my limited perspective, I feel like he's doing The Work. (I know there are complaints from a few different directions.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:06 PM on July 28 [5 favorites]

I very recently found FDS and have truly appreciated his in depth research and journalism. His attention to detail is something sorely lacking in so many areas of media out there.

Some of his discussions around Drake in the past few months have helped me contextualize and explain the dislike/distrust that a lot of folks have with him(Drake).

I had a busy weekend so I only got to watch about 1hr20min of the video but its really good so far. Looking forward to finishing it this afternoon.

(I got a good chuckle when he referenced it as being longer than LotR early in the video)
posted by Twain Device at 7:55 AM on July 29 [1 favorite]

Having watched the video, I would love to learn more about the history of hip-hop. Is there a definitive work on the topic?
posted by orrnyereg at 10:16 AM on July 29

idk about definitive, I haven't read it, but the book but can't stop won't stop aspires to be
posted by confabulous at 10:31 AM on July 29 [2 favorites]

I don't really see a definitive hip-hop history book--there's too much Great-Man-ism in the prevailing narrative, not enough room for regional and global stories--but I'd recommend any of these:

Nelson George - Hip Hop America (1998)
Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists (1999)
Jeff Chang - Can't Stop Won't Stop (2005)
Shea Serrano - The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed (2015)
Jonathan Abrams - The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop (2022)
Questlove - Hip Hop is History (2024)
posted by box at 10:39 AM on July 29 [9 favorites]

Having watched the video, I would love to learn more about the history of hip-hop. Is there a definitive work on the topic?

I really dug Ed Piskor's "Hip Hop Family Tree" graphic novel, but I didn't follow it all the way through.

I haven't read any of these books but friends of mine have enjoyed them, and they would probably constitute a sort of 101-level survey course:

Hip Hop America by Nelson George

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang

The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop by Jonathan Abrams

Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists by Sacha Jenkins

The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed by Shea Serrano

I think it might be more useful to read biographies by rappers, but I haven't got into it yet. Jay-Z, Scarface, Prodigy, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Rakim and so many more have biographies, some ghostwritten of course. I'd like to make a project of this one day. The books that don't take an oral history approach seem to just not have enough participation by the actual people who created the culture.

I've skimmed all the books that I mentioned above and they tend to overrate New York and LA in the development of the music, and kinda skip the places where much of the innovation has come from over the years--Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, etc.
posted by kensington314 at 10:49 AM on July 29 [4 favorites]

or, what box said.
posted by kensington314 at 10:50 AM on July 29 [2 favorites]

And once some context is in place, Fear of Black Hat is hip hop's Spinal Tap.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:57 AM on July 29 [2 favorites]

There’s a lot of oral history (i.e. interviews) available on YouTube. To some extent the music itself forms a history (Kanye’s first album has a lot about his struggle to break into the industry). Whether there’s any work that captures the big picture, beyond the New York origins that have been covered a million times, is a good question. It’s tricky because the history is very networked. Like there are the overarching narratives - it started on the East Coast, then developed bicoastal centers of power, then the South took over - and they’re not untrue, but “The South” is Atlanta/Houston/Memphis/New Orleans/Miami and they each have their own thing and their own connections. You look at the influence of No Limit in New Orleans, and it came from Master P coming back to his hometown from the Bay Area where guys like E-40 had pioneered running independent labels.

Also I’m just some white guy from California but then if I can know about some of this stuff just from being a fan of the music and digging into the regional stories so can you I guess.
posted by atoxyl at 1:50 PM on July 29 [4 favorites]

I might come back with other memoir suggestions (Jay-Z, DMC, DMX) or anti-suggestions (Run, Lil Wayne, Eminem), but I specifically want to recommend Prodigy’s My Infamous Life. It captures the end of the rap Golden Age, and life in early-‘90s Queensbridge and NYC, in a way that’s hard to find. The man had a voice.
posted by box at 5:04 PM on July 29 [1 favorite]

I mean Drake showed up in the rap game because of his Degrassi credit. The only surprise is how long it took someone to point out that he doesn't belong. That pusha-t investigation revealing his child just gave him more cred.

I don't know where his head is at now, but his last song has him vocalizing "but you were never my girl, it was just my turn". Sorry, but that's just cringe for a 37 year old.

The only better TKO was where Eminem made MGK change entire genres so he doesn't have to come up against Eminem again.
posted by hal_cy_on at 3:25 AM on July 30 [2 favorites]

The only surprise is how long it took someone to point out that he doesn't belong.

People were saying that from the beginning. He reached a point where people stopped saying it so much, because the modern culture of the genre has a built-in respect for commercial success, because he demonstrated his ability not just to make critically acclaimed RnB/rap/pop albums but to dabble in, let’s say, competent rap for the rap fans, and when called out for not actually writing it all himself managed to come out of that beef on top. Ironically he won the Meek Mill battle partly by being self-deprecating - the one line I really remember from those songs is “bodied by a singing n__.” Then he got too cocky.
posted by atoxyl at 7:35 AM on July 30 [1 favorite]

Ironically he won the Meek Mill battle partly by being self-deprecating

I remember him publicly proclaiming that Will Smith is the best rapper from Philly... and then "Is that your world tour or your girl's tour?". OUCH.

Self-deprecation has been his go-to since 'Marvin's Room'. But we have to remember that he's the same guy that leaked his own genitalia. Its all a scam.
posted by hal_cy_on at 3:08 AM on July 31 [1 favorite]