Scenesters and Rap Music

I'm getting the feeling that all that was really wanted here was a rap. First of all, let's talk about rap. I like rap. In elementary school, there was a bus-in program for inner city kids. While I lived in a little hamlet affectionately referred to as "White Folks' Bay," my best friends taught me to sing along with 2 Live Crew, and even the accompanying hand movements. I didn't know what they meant. Anyway, I listened to the rap station on my little clock radio. I still think that image is pretty funny. A little 3rd grade white kid falling to sleep while listening to MC Hammer or whoever was playing then. Musical tastes progressed, and life went on.

In high school, we had to research a social movement. I chose the Black Panthers. It was pretty interesting, and that lead to reading a lot of the founding Panthers' biographies. Somehow that lead into the spoken word thing that was going on in the 60s and 70s, and that lead into Gil Scott Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." That (and "Whitey on the Moon"), and several other spoken word artists, took me back to rap. Actually, the other day I saw this Scroobius Pip video, and was pretty pleased with it. Let's hear it for the spoken word.

Anyway, I think the original appeal of rap to me was fitting in, and now it's kind of the irony that attracts me (and the illness of it all). I have secret desires to be a white rapper and call people honkey. I enjoy driving in my car and practicing my "rap voice," which I like to think is a mix between James Murphy and John McCrea. I'm really too embarrassed to do it in front of people. Anyway, though you can't tell, I got off this post somehow as I was looking up LCD Soundsystem and have spent the last hour on music blogs (I'm so easily distracted). This brings the post full circle.

It seems like being a hipster involves SUCH effort. These dumb music blogs (and yet I keep reading them) have the new "it" band every day--and they're not really all that different or special. For example, I really like music, especially dance music. All dance music, especially the whole remix scene seems to finally be coming around to glitch pop, but it's also all starting to sound really really similar. Are we just inventing new things so we can have something new? Inventing cool to be cool? Indie kids, independent music, independent kids, independent scene... But really it seems like so many kids are the same. Of course, I don't think of myself as a hipster (not a single indie kid would admit to it, that's part of being one, right?), but they're the ones at our dance parties and I'm at their parties and we're friends and... am I one? We all want to be different, and we find out subculture and great, people like us, but oh MAN, people like us. Is it possible to be unique, because there are so many other kids out there being unique? Thus, my love hate relationship (ala Night of the Hunter) with all things "indie." Indy is the dog's name.

PS - This is not my rap voice. Even though my door was closed, I could still hear my roommate laughing, and it made me feel dumb--this is much quieter.

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