Music Dude: American Idol-atry

Because so much of my time and actual music ramblings are now committed to ThisIsRealMusic.com, I recognize that I havent done a Music Dude blog in a while. As much as I enjoy the T.I.R.M. work, there's nothing like the unfettered ramblings and rants I get to drop in this space. So The Dude is back...and since its been such a long time, I got a wholelotta ish to say...

AMERICAN IDOL
This show is a problem. I never used to watch the show, always seemed stupid and corny and basically for old retirees and girls. The most I would get is when my little cuzzes would make these highlight tapes of the "rejects" and show them to me and we'd crack up laughing and then that'd be it. As far as me sitting in front of a television every week yay-naying some amateur knockoffs while some fat black man that sounds and acts like he's an SNL skit where a white man is playing an exaggerated version of a black...i mean...the whole show always seemed irredeemable. I'm a little more exposed to this since I moved to NYC, because my sister watches this all the time...its something I never had to deal with living by myself. Much like Lyd's red carpet play-by-play, she does the same with these poorly dressed, copy cat rubes that prance on the stage sounding like Beyonce, Justin Timberlake or beat boxing in the middle of a Dianna Ross song...this ish is steaming hot trash.

But what really opened my eyes to 1.) just how much of a pervasive phenomenon this show is, and 2.) just how much this threatens the integrity and artistic fiber of music; came during my couple months back in Buffalo, playing Scrabble with my aunts.

A true highlight of my week during my Buffalo stay was Sunday, when I ventured over my Aunt Kimmy and Uncle Tip's crib and sat down at the table with them and my other Aunt Kim to play some post-dinner Scrabble. I don't play spades or poker or any of that, I play Scrabble...and not all that good, mind you. I prolly played a total of 50 games during those 4 months and I won ZERO times...came in second maybe 20-30 times, but never won...this, actually, is irrelevant. Back to American Idol...I used to make these playlists on my iPod (a little old skool, some new stuff, some classics, some obscure joints, that kinda steez) and we'd groove while trying get that Triple Word Score with the "Z".

The weird thing would be when a Stevie Wonder or Anita Baker or Whitney Houston or Dionne Warrick or Curtis Mayfield song would come on and one of my aunts would say something like, "Ooh, remember when Stacy did this on American Idol? What was that, 2 years ago?" And they'd smile and nod their head. One time, a Stevie track came on and my Aunt Kim said to my other Aunt Kim, "Heyyy. Remember, Kim? This is Niko's song." Now mind you, my Aunt Kim is prolly one of the baddest listening broads on the planet earth. She grew up in the same house as my Pops, so Aunt Kim can sang you every Delfonics tune and hum every tune off Miles' Sketches of Spain. This is no lightweight we're talkin about here. But this American Idol trash has become such virus that it's infecting the way we identify straight-up-n-down bonafide classic songs. Its gotten to the point where legitimate music enthusiasts can begin to correlate a classic song to the snaggle-toothed amateur American idol contestant before the legendary artist that sang the song.

My Uncle Warren had had enough at the point. He looked at me incredulously like "Do you see whats going on here?" then looked down at his tiles, let out an exasperated chuckle and muttered to noone in particular "That's STEVIE's song, not that American Idol boy's."

The song was "All I Do" off Hotter Than July, one of those joints with a classic Stevie piano melody, one where he gives us those classic Stevie moments where he strains his voice so hard you think his larynx will burst. Yet, my Aunt Kims really like this Niko guy (I remember seeing him on a tape my cousins showed me. He was a squarish R&B dude, one that girls and women would develop an affection for. The only reason I remember him is because he's the great baseball player Ozzie Smith's son.). Because my aunts liked him so much, they remember all his performances and because he didnt win and hasnt shown up anywhere else, they probably miss him, so when "All I Do" comes on, they think about him before the friggin genius blind man that penned the song, sung the song and played practically all the instruments on the song. Think about that for a second. American Idol must be stopped.

And I'm not worried about my Aunts. Theyre cool...unless slews of nerdy black guys with good voices start to overwhelm the contestant lineup, my Aunts will be fine. But what about the younger generation? Really, what just about everyone born from 1984 and and back, specifically the ones that dont come from families that are big into music? But really, what about them all? These are children that don't know who Pearl Jam is, but they know some cheeseball with dirty hair sang "Jeremy" on American Idol...so it's not Pearl Jam's song, it's the dirty-haired cheesball's song. Or, "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You" won't be Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's tune, it'll be "Oh, this that hipless skank and slack-jawed gay dude's duet in '06".

I'm tellin you, the possibility and, frighteningly, likelihood that classic works of art by incredible artists and musicians are being hijacked by a lowest common denominator, ameteur talent show is the most threatening attack on music of the new millenium. Not illegal downloading, or snap music or Joss Stone or Hot 97 -- it's American Idol. So either people start keeping this show in perspective or I'm gonna start mobilizing the troops to get this thing kicked off the air (fat chance, but i gotsto family).

Racial Profiling Is The Pits, Pt. II

Last week, me and my niggas Trav and HotTub (yes his name is HotTub) embarked on a road trip to Durham for some ThisIsRealMusic.com business. We rented a van, departed Philadelphia, hooked up the iPod, kopped the snacks and put the Chrysler on cruise. These things are simple and normal and the exact opposite of extraordinary. That is unless you are three black men driving a van down the 95 and 85.

We were stopped TWICE on the way to Durham. Once in southern Virginia and then again a few miles past the Va-NC border. These were classic cases of racial profiling, aka driving while black aka a nigger's America.

Let me tell you a little bit about gay people. They annoy me. Not because they are men that do other men missionary style or women couples where one looks like Naomi Watts and the other looks like Gary Busey. No, they annoy me because they negligently compare their plight to that of the negro american. There is just absolutely no comparison. Three gay men won't be pulled over without cause because a cop wouldnt know they were gay, lest they were wearing pink, lime green and periwinkle sweaters tied around their necks, singing Liza Minelli at the top of their feminine lungs with the windows down. Even still, they'd be allowed to go about the merry way. But the fuzz can't spot a blackie from a mile away and the mere sight of brown skin seems to be reason enough to put on the blinkers and protect and serve.

Somewhere below Richmond, we were in our groove. We were making good time, talking business and, of course, rappin about music. That's when Trav frantically turns down the music, asks "what's that sound?", looks in the rear view and sees some unmarked car flagging us down with blinking lights and a siren. The cop walks up on the driver side, asks for licence and registration, but gives us no idea why we've been stopped. At this time, HotTub is just waking up (he slept for the whole trip except during the times when we stopped for gas or were stopped to be racially profiled), Trav meanwhile, is on pins and needles. He's the kinda black dude that is completely aware of the police/blackman dynamic and, instead of reacting with defiance, indignation or exasperation...reacts with frayed nerves and calculated submission. My first question to the kop would have been "may I ask why I've been stopped." Trav never asked the question in the midst of a 5-8 question interrogation. Trav also generally thinks of me as a loose cannon and confrontation-escalator, so I was trying to just be still and quiet, so as not to heighten his concern over where this encounter was going. But then, after no explanation, this pig cop asks Trav to step out of the car. At that point it was like "screw this cooperation madness", so I asked this idiot cop why were pulled over. His response: "Ohhhhh, some speeding, changing lanes without signals and a bunch of other stuff." Huh?!?!?!!!!! "Some speeding"???? what is that exactly? Did u clock us going 70 in a 55 or was it just "some speeding."

Anyways, Trav steps out the whip and follows the cop back to his car, where the cop has Trav actually sit inside the effin car!!!!! When has this ever been protocol? They sit there for a good 10 minutes, while the cops rabid, drug sniffing German Sheppard barks in Trav's ear. After he checks licenses, comes back to the car and asks me about the trip (to make sure our stories check) he lets us go without issuing a ticket, issuing a warning, nada. Know why? Because we werent speeding, driving reckless or doing anything other than very normal things that people do when they drive.

Let me tell you a little bit about black men. Some of these niggas make it hard out here for a Vince. If you don't know, a fairly common practice for kats in the drug game is to travel up and down the 95 and 85, in rental cars, with drug packages. Thats how the drugs make it from the docks to the blighted urban centers up and down the east coast. So, I guess, a cop sees some young black men in the driver and passenger seats and figures "what are these two monkeys doing in a van, with Pennsylvania plates? they obviously arent taking their family to Disney World." So they pull us over ("us" meaning young black men in general) to check out what we have in the whips. Similar to when I got pulled over on S.R. 50 in Florida, a state road that runs East-West from Hernando County (a suburban Tampa county where I used to live) to Orlando. Apparently, drugs make their way West, from Orlando to Marion, Sumter counties on SR 50...so when I was returning from hanging with some friends in Orlando one night, I got pulled over, had my car sniffed by a dog, patted down and told to stand with both of my hands behind my head. This all speaks to the dilemma that racial profiling poses...there is a moral responsibility to respect the individual ur profiling. Imputing me with criminal activity based on the color of my skin is downright disrespectful and demeaning. Then again, there is the responsibility to monitor criminal activity and certain criminal activities are perpetrated by a certain profile. I can't totally dismiss this. If me and my nigs happened to be transporting the drugs, then cop who stopped us would be prescient as opposed to a profiling bigot.

Let me tell you a little bit about white cops. Excuse my language, but the tend to be some fairly pronounced d-heads. About an hour after we were first pulled over -- this time I'm driving -- this cop starts tailing me, then pulls beside me and drives right there (a good 10 miles below speed limit) for half a mile. Finally I just pull over without him even putting on his signals. At this point I'm fuming, Trav is petrified and HotTub is snoring. I'm enraged because I don't speed. I don't speed because I used to speed when I was a young buck and it resulted in a suspended license. So these days, specifically on road trips, I set the cruise control at about 5 mph over the speed limit and just chill. I know for a fact that cops won't bother vehicles as long as they stay with 8 miles of the speed limit, since you dont get two points on ur license unless ur are 9mph over the limit and above.

So this a-hole kop pulls up on the passengers side. Asks for license and registration. He's about 50, looks, talks and acts like a southern football coach, which basically means he looks like Nick Nolte, talks like Dubya and acts like an alpha-male schmuck with one testicle and penis envy. Once again, we arent told why we were stopped. But after a string of questions and the most detailed inspection of our licenses and rental agreement, he asks The Tub, "Hey, buddy, you had that seat belt on the whole time?" Tub being a grown man in the back of a van. After Tub says he's been wearing the seatbelt the whole time, Nolte asks Trav to step out of the van and follow him to the squad car, where he once again gets interrogated while the licenses are run and a German Sheppard foams at the mouth behind his ear. And once again, Trav is let go without a warning or ticket and barely an explanation for why we were stopped other than "It looked like your partner didnt have his seat belt on." WTF?!?!?!!!

Let me tell you a little bit about HotTub. He's the kinda guy that appears to be high all day. I don't know if it's the oblivious smile or the things he says, but whatever it is, it's the pinnacle of comedy. As we got back on the road, the playlist was in the middle of "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", a Beatles track. HotTub decides to turn that melody into a country song, whose chorus merely refrains, "Gon' get me a nigger, gon' get me a nigger, gon' get me a nigger, hang him from a tree." Tub's hijinks totally trivialized the weight of what we were going through, but it was hilarious way to articulate what we were all basically thinkin: Aint nuttin changed.

Let me tell you a little bit about Barak Obama and Jemele Hill. Them two niggas is successful, but don't get it twisted. I love how everyone looks at this Obama phenomenon as an indication that we have reached this beautiful space in American race relations. Please cut the charade. As great as it is that people can see past Obama's skin and recognize some incredible talent and commendable drive and encouraging ambitions and visions -- that doesnt mean that this represents even a small slice of the way America operates and handles its ongoing relationship with minorities. The same way I can view Hillary Clinton as very capable women, but generally consider most women to be ditzy broads that welcome deviant forms of domination. Because straight up, Obama and Tiger could be driving that same van and they'd have gotten pulled over, too. feel me?

I mean, my friend Jemele is most definitely an American success story. This is a black woman, barely 30, raised in a single parent home in Detroit of all places. Now she's on ESPN, wearin make-up givin it to Skip Bayless...she's a star in an industry dominated by ridiculous white men with agendas. As I've said before, just thinking about her success makes me smile. She's also one of the people that an ignoramus would point to and say, "See, America is fine. It aint like it was before Rosa Park's feet hurt." And this is partly true. There are more opportunities afforded and it might be easier to achieve these days, but there are core injustices that remain a huge part of the black existence. Me, Trav and The Tub are all law abiding, college educated, upstanding black men. We were on our way to NC Central University (a historically black college) to document a hip hop class and talk to kids and generally do stuff that the average buffoon doesn;t associate with black men, since we're typical viewed as criminal-minded rubes with big penises, potent sperm and no sense of responsibility. Yet, we were subjected to the worse kind of infringement AND the pre-existing dynamic our ethnic gender has with police forced us to kowtow and behave like kids. It's the most emasculating experience you can imagine, one that had Trav (the dude forced to sit in these cop cars) holding back tears.

That's what it's like for us, many times. You fight your whole life on a mission to achieve and, in many ways, put your fellow black men on your back so to speak and show the skeptics how we get down. And then they hit you with one of my favorite American sentiments: Not so fast, nigger.

...

blogs coming soon....

What Would A Whitey Do

Just so you know, black people don't live in the Bronx. That's straight up. There are the Jews in Riverdale, the Italians in the northern most section, headed into Yonkers...and then the rest of the Bronx is all hispanic.

Seriously, though, Lyd and I are the only black people that live in the whole borough. I'm not joking. Well, besides one other dude. True story, I was walking down Fordham Rd. the other day (Fordham is to the Bronx what Jamaica Ave is to Queens and, say, Fulton or Flatbush is to BK) and the other black dude living in the Bronx spotted me across the street. He shouted out: "Say, brotha, whatchu doin up here?!" Then he threw up a fist, flashed a smile, walked across the busy street, gave me a hug and offered to buy me a duece-duece of malt liquor.

I just want to reiterate that there are no black people living in the Bronx.

With the borough being OVERWHELMINGLY hispanic, I've found myself behaving like a caucasion (one "whitey" per blog, thats my allotment). This means that I travel to perform routine functions that are available much closer to my abode.

Almost all of the errand type functions I take 10-15 miles north into Westchester County, an overwhelmingly white suburban county of NYC. When I go grocery shopping, I forgo the two supermarkets in walking distance and drive 15 minutes to the joint in Yonkers. I go to a gym in Westchester County because I don't want to have to deal with front desk girls that can't really undertstand me and I'd like for there to be at least three bottles of disinfectant in the whole gym. If I wanna catch a flick, I'll either head to Manhattan or travel north to Bronxville or Palisades.

What it illustrates is an inherit distrust of everything that has to do with quality when it comes to my hispanic neighbors, similar, I guess, to how my parents used to bypass two supermarkets on the East Side of Buffalo to hit the Tops in North Buffalo. Yeah, its a class thing, but I cant help but notice the snobbery every time I get in the car and drive away from the colored people.

It's funny, because when it comes to Blockbuster, I try to find the most hood store I can, my thinking being that, the more hood, the worse patron-tastes...

Women and Red Carpet

...or I guess that should really say Women and Red Carpet AND Award Shows.
(random aside: the house I rented in Florida had red carpet. and one of the bathrooms was purple...just sayin...)

I'm sure this is no revelation to anyone, but women take red carpets ultra-seriously. Watch the pre-show for the Grammys or Oscars or VMAs with a feme and it's really alarming how worked up they get over who is wearing what and how their hair looks. It must be what the opp-sex thinks about the way us kats scream at the tele during sporting events, huh?

I guess I fall somewhere in the middle. I have dudes that are zombies during a good game and others that are maniacal. My new move for the past couple years has been to just clap my hands extremely loud...catch me during a close Laker or Wizard game and I might get a little extra hype, but nothing ridiculous.

My sister, Lyd, is ridiculous with the Red Carpet commentary and reactions. She literally had something to say about every star that passed the television screen. I'm not talking about simple, "Oh, she looks beautiful." or some customary catty quips like, "Oh no she didn't come with that much cleavage." Sis was breakin ish down like she the equivalent of a Red Carpet John Madden or something. Not only that, but her reactions were incredibly emotional...when Jenniffer Hudson stepped up to kick it with Seacrest -- who, I've come to find out, is flamingly gay -- Lyd actually through her arms up in the air and groaned in lamentation. Hudson's silver Star-Trek shoulder-thing depressed Lyd for a good five minutes. Other times she was excoriating stylist for the way they did their stars hair, "How she gonna pay you money to make her look good and you let her walk down the red carpet with her hair lookin' a mess? You know good well she should have worn her hair UP with that dress!"

I sat there beside her for an hour consistently dumbfounded. Aside from the gay fashion reporters (always entertaining in a deviant way), the Red Carpert (for a kat) is only good to see some beautiful women looking their best. Beyonce was hot, Jessica Biel was hot, Kate Winslet was hot, Penelope Cruz was hot and Helen effin Mirren was hot (I got such a crush on ol' girl...her, Phylicia Rashaad and Meryl Streep...these things cant be explained, they just are what they are...), Jada Pinkett is looking more masculine each day...on the carpet she looked like Juelz Santana in a dress, Will is going gray...these are the very superficial things I notice and pay any mind...Lyd was so keen during the pre-show I was more entertained watching her reaction, it was over the top.

It prolly has to do with that whole Vicarious Life deal. Men do that with athletes, since most of us can't march a squad down the field in 2 minutes like Tom Brady or reel off 12 straight clutch-points in the fourth quarter like Kobe or hit the walk-off homer like Big Pap. Broads will never look as glamorous as Beyonce or Cameron Diaz. And the same way us kats play virtual GM and armchair quarterback, commending and deriding personnel decisions and actual athletic proceedings and coaching strategies as if we're more qualified than the professionals...the same way we do that, women seem to think they know what would look best on Kerry Washington and how Hillary Swank should wear her hair so she looks less like Kevin Bacon. To hear Lyd last Sunday was to hear a woman that must have never made a wrong fashion decision in her life (although if I was honest I would have to say Lyd stays fly with her gear, but still...).

Midway through the Red Carpet, when it was first hitting me that Lyd was taking this thing ultra-serious like it was Game 7 of the NBA Finals or the bar exam, I made some stupid comment...something like, "I can't believe you're getting this worked up." That's when she revealed that, in most cases she doesn't even watch the actual awards show, she just watched the red carpet and then switches the channel. "I don't really care who wins what, I just wanna see what they're wearing." awes.