(Author’s note: I wrote this editorial the same day Jameson Walthers’ critique was featured, and submitted it one day before the deadline for Wespeaks published in Friday’s paper. For reasons I can’t comprehend, it was never printed. I resubmitted the editorial with the conviction that, though some of my response’s urgency may have been lost, its necessity wasn’t.)
After Jameson Walthers’ pointed critique of my first two CD reviews for the Argus, I feel obliged to respond. Walthers makes some very good points about my reviews; I am approaching this stuff from a rock perspective, and despite possessing some 50 rap albums, I’m no authority on hip-hop. That said, I’d like to point out that I make no pretenses to being a maven of said subject. To be honest, I’m no authority on any one particular genre. My interests in music are broad-based and continue to broaden, and indie-rap itself is a subculture within a subculture (as is indie rock, of course). I was initially hesitant about reviewing Seven’s Travels because my knowledge about the group wasn’t as deep as I would’ve liked it to be.
That said, Walthers seems to imply in his critique something that, to me, is a troubling notion; the idea that rock scribes don’t have the “authority” to write about rap. This despite the fact that rock critics often do write about rap, soul aficionados write about rock, punk lovers rave about old country music, and scads of writers praise artists who sing in languages they can’t understand. These kinds of interactions are what cultural dialogues are predicated upon, and I for one don’t believe that my relative lack of knowledge about a genre or even an artist makes my opinion any less valid.
As regards the writing style that Walthers calls into question, I can’t defend myself on matters of aesthetic principle. I will say, however, that there was a paragraph I wrote in a revised version of my article on Seven’s Travels, which was not published due to an e-mail glitch, in which I did cite some of Slug’s lyrics. It reads as follows:
It’s hard not to think of Eminem when listening to that particular cut [“Trying to Find A Balance”], which mixes paranoia and grandstanding in a fashion not unlike that of Mr. Mathers, as the following lines attest: “In the days of kings and queens I was a jester / Treat me like a god or they treat me like a leper / You see me move back and forth between both / I’m trying to find a balance, I’m trying to build a balance”. While Slug is no jester on the level of Slim Shady, he possesses a maturity and clarity of perspective that Eminem has yet to attain. He criticizes the girls who’ve done him wrong, but he doesn’t stoop to sexist swill or take cheap shots; in a welcome advance, Seven’s Travels contains nothing along the lines of “Make noise for the women who swallow stuff,” an utterance heard on God Loves Ugly. Moreover, while the first several tracks brim with intense frustration and rage, Slug’s lyrics rarely turn nasty.
Walthers’ critique of my writing largely centers on his belief that I don’t pay enough heed to lyrics. I do listen to the lyrics, but the first thing that hits me whenever I play an album is the music. It often takes 20 listens or so before the lyrics really start to sink in, and given the time constraints of writing a review for a paper I didn’t have the luxury of hearing the album that much. I think Walthers is keenly aware that hip-hop writers focus much more on lyrical content than many rock writers do, and unless a phrase really jumps out at me (which happens much more frequently when I listen to mercurial MCs like Kool Keith or Ghostface Killah) I don’t tend to hone in on lyrics until much later.
I’d like to mention as well that the inaccurate headline touting Speakerboxxx/The Love Below as Outkast’s final album was not mine. I considered informing my editor that the rumors of Outkast’s breakup were mere hearsay, but as it was my first article for the paper I thought criticizing editorial decision probably wasn’t too wise. Jameson Walthers probably knows a lot more about hip-hop than I do, and I would encourage him to write for the Argus. I happen to know an awful lot about popular music in general, though (as he may as well), and I don’t think my relative outsider status disqualifies me from writing about hip-hop effectively.
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