The music industry has few cautionary tales as dramatic as the MC Hammer story.

The ’90s rap star swiped a choice Rick James riff and rode it to the top of the music charts with “U Can’t Touch This.” His career crashed a few years later, forcing him to declare bankruptcy despite having made – and spent – millions over a relatively short time span.

Now, Hammer is using his dulcet tones to support Occupy Oakland, one of the country’s more violent chapters of the Occupy Wall Street movement – and that’s saying something.

He’s no longer at the top of the pop charts. Instead, he’s sandwiched between his fellow Occupiers and local law enforcement. And, according to this news report, he may be in serious need of Lasik eye surgery.

After thousands of peaceful protestors rallied and danced in the streets on Wednesday, MC Hammer found himself in the middle of a police standoff before a splinter group clashed with authorities, setting fires, spraying graffiti and shattering windows.

“It’s tense down here .. I’m lost for words … I’m (at)occupyoakland,” Hammer tweeted, posting pictures of officers forming a barricade. “The people are peaceful .. I’m in the camp and now in the streets.”

Correction:  The quote referring to Common’s music as “very positive” was mistakenly attributed to Media Matters in the originally published version of this piece.  We regret the error.

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Have you heard about “Poetry Night” at the White House?  I find it appalling and very inappropriate (yet not at all that surprising) that the Obamas have invited “Common”, a rapper who grew up in the pews of America-hating “Reverend” Wright’s church, who he describes as an “intelligent, strong individual…a great man…a conduit of love.”   He denigrates women with his misogynistic lyrics, promotes killing cops, and burning (President) Bush. Isn’t that special?  His lyrics have been praised by a Fox News reporter as being “very positive.”  Are you kidding me?

Hi Caliber

This is just another tactic this administration is using to convince young Americans that Barrack Obama is just that “cool” and that these are the kinds of artists your kids should be listening to.

Please.

In the New York Times Bestseller Obama Zombies:  How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation, author Jason Mattera describes how liberals successfully launched their highly successful technology-based campaign to take advantage of and brain-wash his generation into becoming “zombies” for Team Obama.  They used every facet of new media to reach our youth through their computers, iPods, and cell phones via new media venues and services like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and text messaging and “rocked the vote” in favor of “That One.”

Thankfully, we conservative keyboard warriors are fighting back with those very same tactics to reach our young voters using every weapon in our arsenal (e.g., conservative websites, blogs, video rants, music, books, artwork, and the list goes on).   In less than two years (since the 2008 elections), through the effective use of  new media, the TEA Party movement managed to rise up and put a major hurtin’ on the Democrats in the House and Senate in the mid-term elections.  It was interesting to note that younger voters seemed less than enthusiastic about voting in 2010.  Perhaps voter’s remorse is setting in?

Good.

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Ashley Judd’s no conservative, that’s for sure, but the predicted backlash has already begun. Here’s where it started – excerpts from her memoir:

Along with other performers, YouthAIDS was supported by rap and hip-hop artists like Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy to spread the message…um, who? Those names were a red flag.

“As far as I’m concerned, most rap and hip-hop music — with it’s rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as ‘ho’s’ — is the contemporary soundtrack of misogyny.

“I believe that the social construction of gender — the cultural beliefs and practices that divide the sexes and institutionalize and normalize the unequal treatment of girls and women, privilege the interests of boys and men, and, most nefariously, incessantly sexualize girls and women — is the root cause of poverty and suffering around the world.”

After the backlash hit, Judd got in touch with rap mogul Russell Simmons. He interviewed her for his website. To her credit she didn’t appear to back down:

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As a political music blogger with no political credentials and horrible musical taste, it was a huge deal when I found the very first straw-man Daily Kos rebuttal to an article of mine.  According to the author “jethrock,” I hopped on “the false narrative that reverse racism exists and scary Black people hate you (if you’re white) and are out to get you.” 

Note the progressive buzzwords:  “reverse racism,” which I never mentioned and is a silly concept (racism is racism, no matter from whom), and “scary Black people,” which I never mentioned either, yet seems to be the default spin thrown at Andrew Breitbart for pointing out racism in the NAACP.  The point of the article was that comments and actions which would have drawn the ire of the NAACP if made by white entertainers (can you imagine the response if Lady Gaga made a video where she wore a pointed hood and rallied a mob with torches and lead pipes?) were ignored when they were made by black entertainers—entertainers lauded at the Image awards. 

As some in the comments suggested, however, these entertainers cannot be racist, because racism is not about race but about power; only whites can be racist because only whites have the power to oppress.  Ridiculous as that is, let’s just assume that it’s correct for the sake of argument.  So if it’s not wrong for Ice Cube to refer to white people as his “enemy” and to rap about shooting white people– since as a black man, he cannot oppress a white man—is it wrong for Ice Cube (an Image award recipient) to rap, “Fuck and get up is how I do them stank hoes”?  Regardless of race, the Left cannot deny that men are still in a position to oppress women (just ask about Clarence Thomas), and the NAACP has been woefully silent on the open advocacy of misogyny and sexual violence amongst its Image award nominees and winners. (more…)

Headphone connects to the neck bone
Neck bone connects to the arm bone
Arm bone connects to the hand bone
Hand bone connects to the Internet
Connected to the Google, connected to the Government

So begins /\/\/\Y/\ by rapper/pop star/activist M.I.A., cutting to the heart of the cultural sea change wrought by the Internet.  If there are only six degrees of separation between us and the feds, who monitor as much of our communication as they can, what’s the point of trying to keep anything private?  It’s an introduction that piques our interest and prepares us for an uncensored albeit uneven look into the mind of an indie critical darling who, with fame, is losing the political edge that made her famous.

The Sri Lankan refugee, real name Maya Arulpragasm, has named her last two albums after her parents: Arular after her father, a Tamil political activist, and Kala after her mother, who raised her in Wimbledon after Sri Lanka erupted into civil war.  Those albums created an exhilarating synthesis of exotic world rhythms, Western hip-hop attitude, subversive political references, and an ADD-addled, pastiche production style that does for music what Dogme 95 only wishes it could accomplish in film.

Starting out, M.I.A. proclaimed that she wanted to make her music about something more than the superficial fluff that normally populates the airwaves:  “Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing,” she’s quoted as saying.  “I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked.”  With controversial name-drops of the PLO and rants against corporations, her lyrics swapped the sweet nothings of tween-targeting songwriters for the shrill nothing of her art school peers.  Regardless, her style injected fresh life into the hip-hop world, which Jay-Z famously declared had entered its “hair metal phase.” (more…)

For most non-Teutons the idea of German rock is not very appealing. The fatherland of Bach and Beethoven may well have produced many interesting experimental groups (Kraftwerk,  Einstürzende Neubauten etc) but on a global, top 40 level it’s an entirely different matter. Consider: 

1) The Scorpions- hair metal popular in the 80s, approximately as good as Winger.

2) KMFDM- plodding industrial metal from the late 80s/early90s.

3) That Nena chick of ‘99 luftballons’ fame. 

In short, a roster of acts so unnecessary that we could safely consign them to the same dark abyss as Croatian thrash or Russian hip hop and the human race would be none the poorer for it. And yet fortunately for the glory of popular Deustche musik this is not the end of the story- for in the mid 90s what rough beast slouched towards Germany to be born? Breathing flames and reveling in death and all manner of deviancy, its name was Rammstein. 

Formed in the early 1990s by veterans of several crap East German groups, Rammstein consisted of six men in their 30s who had grown up under communism. They took their name from Ramstein, a US military base where a terrible disaster had occurred during an air show in 1988, adding an extra ‘m’ to dislocate it slightly. With the Berlin Wall fallen, the band was now liberated to steal as many sounds and ideas as they desired. These included elements of classic heavy metal, industrial metal and gothic synth pop such as Depeche Mode; not to mention liberal appropriations from Laibach, a Slovenian group fascinated by the links between mass culture, pop music and totalitarianism. (If you have a few minutes I recommend you watch Laibach’s reinterpretations of Queen’s One Vision and Opus’ Life is Life: the originals will never sound the same again.) (more…)

Some listeners to my Barely Legal Radio Program are asking me if Taylor Swift has a defamation case against Kanye West for his recent actions against her at the VMA awards, and if Barack Obama has a defamation case against Joe Wilson. Although it would be unimaginable to see her pursue this, Swift actually has a couple decent causes of action against West.

In a suit for defamation you need damages. Provable damages in this case would center on the value of the airtime Swift was deprived of to speak about her recordings. Expert witnesses would testify as to the “bump” typically witnessed after an acceptance speech in such a valuable forum. Arguably, West deprived Swift of this sales bump. (more…)

The disconnect between beauty and popularity in music has never been greater.  Where once America sang the Beatles or Motown (“The Sound of Young America”), today the music industry is severely fragmented.  Gangsta rap.  Speed metal.  Trip-hop.  The major recording companies whine about declining profits even as they pay Mariah Carey $18 million not to record.

Unanimity of public opinion over popular song has passed.  Music, which used to unite, now divides.  Eminem and Ludacris would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.  We live in an antinomian age where it’s hip to defy conventional wisdom long after every vestige of conventional wisdom lies in tatters.  Where Keats’ Grecian Urn once proclaimed, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” today’s antinomian consumer proclaims, “Whatever,” in a voice oozing ennui. (more…)

Freshly minted Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele gave an interview to the Washington Times in which he detailed his plans for making the GOP relevant again.  Says Steele:

We need messengers to really capture that region – young, Hispanic, black, a cross section … We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.

Hip-hop.  Really?  That’s Chairman Steele’s reductive take on people of color?  That unless “principles” are framed in rhyme and break beats we will have no interest in them? (more…)

If this photo is authentic, it serves as a perfect example of what the hip-hop mentality can do to women. Chris Brown may not be a hip-hop artist, but he’s certainly part of its culture and attitude. This culture is anti-women, and basically anti-civilization. (more…)