Guilty.
Thanks to some extensive magazine browsing at the weekend, I now know that RJD2's new album Since We Last Spoke is out May 17, and he lists 'watching the OC ' as one of his top ten favorite things, labelling it his guilty pleasure (mine too). There's a sound sample of his new album over at Def Jux (scroll down). Sounds like he's gone all indie rock on it.
And what's naughty ol Courtney Love been up to, then? Behaving like a rock star? Shocking.
3 comments:
The whole backpacker myth is kind of retroactive history. Used to be backpackers were just thugs in NYC--the backpacks were for your drugs and your guns. (see Black Moon's "Who Got the Props"). there was a transition from grimey NYC shit being mainstream (at the same time as G-funk and other Cali ish) to a more poppy rap sensibility ruling the airwaves, leading to NYC going more underground. At the same time, the indie rap scene in NYC blew up, with lots of artists who had fallen out of their major label contracts picking up work with indies. Many of these were the original "backpackers," and the aesthetic (and dress and clothing etc) carried over to the new fan base and promoters, many of whom were young and white. Rawkus was the biggest indie, so they often get the credit for starting the "backpack" movement. And pretty wrongly.
Anyways...at the point, you had a bizarre correlation of white kids, underground rap and backpacks. Around that time, you also had the rise of the internet, and small pockets of underground rap fans
around the world could get a taste of the next shit coming out of wherever. With wealth bias and all, a number of these people were white kids too, and they led to popularity of locally unknowns, like
Sole, and the rest of what would become Anticon. Atmosphere (on Rhymesayers) also used the internet dub network to get their shit across the country, as well as west coast indies like Stones Throw, Solesides and Project Blowed. As Rawkus blew up/self-destructed, El-P jumped ship and started Def Jux. Anticon and RSE were bubblin big time around then too, and the split between "underground
rap" and the grimey nyc ish that started it was huge.
Now we're back to a point where the grimey new yorkers have to fend for themselves. The backpack label has been transferred from the white kids who followed the original backpackers, to an insult for white kids who generally tend to be on the jock of whatever is the least hip-hop of what can still be called hip-hop. It wasn't always and insult, yaoming?
(from Noxie - lost this when I changed comments)
Noxies comments relate to the Rawkus post below.
from http://noixe01.blogspot.com/
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