Why Rap & Country Are So Challenging and Why I Much Prefer Tupac Shakur to Will Smith
My Buddy Mike Names His Favorite Xer Black Artist and I Explain Why I Disagree.
See the previous installments in this ongoing debate about music and Generation X’s greatest artists between me and Mike Kilgore, GOTD’s Vice President and Art Director:
Dear
,Greetings from Kansas!
and I made it to Overland, KS on our first day of driving back to California and my back is now only a little bit sore! But Jasmine has been proving herself the ultimate road warrior dog again!
So I meant to write an installment in this series about something I noticed in your earlier list which mirrors my own tastes a bit: neither of us have very much rap or country on our lists. (And your selection of Will Smith as top black artist of your generation I find a bit telling on the point I’m about to make.)
While I’m a serious proponent of Tupac’s greatness, when it comes to other rap artists I’m generally lukewarm. Here’s Billboard’s list of 50 Greatest Rappers and while I recognize the talent of many of the rappers listed and respect their output, none of them impress me as much as Tupac, who it strangely ranks as #4, putting Jay-Z at number 1, Kendrick Lamar at 2, and Nas at 3.
Now if I were to assemble a serious list of top 10 rappers, I’d likely include the 3 of them in the list. But before doing so I’d really need to put some listening into all 3 to assess where to position each. I just haven’t dug that deeply into any of them, apart from Notorious B.I.G., Eminem and 50 Cent’s early careers, and Snoop Dogg. And while each has some talent and skill, in none of them do I see the great artistry and depth which Tupac reached. They’re generally more superficial in what they created — entertaining, but not serious artists making serious art which transcends the limits of the rap genre.
What do I mean the “limits” of the rap genre? Well, I submit that the reason why both of us haven’t really gotten into rap and country is largely due to what I talked about here:
This particular video I embedded summarizes the point which Thomas Sowell laid out in Black Rednecks and White Liberals, which I name as one of the most important books I’ve ever read, and still strongly influences my cultural analysis so much I’m even planning an essay inspired by it for The Joy of Political Sects:
Rap and country, I regard, as the most pure distillations of both black redneck and white redneck cultures. And neither of us grew up in either culture, and I’m somewhat hostile to each. I know clearly how redneck culture ravaged my own family, and black redneck culture has impaired so much progress in improving life in the inner cities. And it’s safe to even argue that both the deaths of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. are a result of black redneck culture’s often outright criminal ethos. It’s called “gangsta rap” for a reason!
So I think generally rap and country almost only become more accessible to those who didn’t grow up in their cultures when they are blended with other genres of music. The only real exception to this is when an artist in then is simply so good that their artistry transcends the genre - and Tupac does that. And we could probably figure out who in country does that too. Probably Johnny Cash is the most obvious example, though it might be said he too is a genre-blender.
So I submit that your preference for Will Smith reflects this blending of genre, specifically rap and pop music. Smith is practically more of a pop music star than a respected rapper. (His policy of refusing to swear in his rap doomed him in this way.)
And honestly, that’s why I never especially got into them. As a rebellious teenager I just generally resisted music, books, and movies which I felt were overly celebrated in mainstream culture. I still haven’t read Harry Potter, still haven’t seen Titanic, and thus I’ve always been a little skeptical of Smith, who The Fresh Prince defined. I acknowledge that he’s made some decent pop songs, but compared to Tupac, he just always struck me as, well, a bit fake. While Tupac rapped about the hard truths of ghetto life and laid out his emotions honestly, Smith was aiming for a decidedly mainstream, accessible-to-white-people, career.
And he did this in his movies too. A Will Smith movie almost always tends to fall into two genres: either a big budget special effects aspiring blockbuster, or an obvious attempt to get an Oscar with a mainstream-friendly, not-at-all-risky, drama. And I guess sometimes he’ll do flat-out comedies too like Hitch.
Admittedly, some of these movies are pretty good for what they are. I really like the Men in Black series, I am Legend, and his earlier Enemy of the State.
The Pursuit of Happiness and Seven Pounds are also well done for the Oscar-bait they are.
Anyway, thanks for this dialogue, it’s been a lot of fun. I think next I’ll lay out my official top 10 for Gen-X musicians and then do a top 20 for my artists overall as you did in your next post.
Perhaps I’ll manage one of these tomorrow or last night once we arrive at our hotel in Oklahoma. We’ll see.
Best wishes my friend, I hope
and Glenn are doing well,David
Thanks, David! Great article. I agree on the redneck thing wholeheartedly. Cheers from Western Wishes, and safe travels.