Contemporary canon: Kendrick Lamar’s “Cartoons & Cereal”

Kendrick Lamar’s “Cartoons & Cereal” (released about a month ago) is probably the best rap song I’ve heard so far this year. (FWIW, a close second would be “Stay Schemin’”, a song which features Rick Ross on his dopely-wise kingpin tip, Drake esoterically dissing Common, and a hilariously dumb, slowed-down verse and hook from some guy called French Montana. Peep that if you haven’t yet, rap fans.) I’m not sure if that’s because the beat is totally outer-space weird, or because Lamar’s delivery and lyrics are so expressive and literary. Let’s focus on the latter, since this is a website about language (and culture (and lots of parentheses)). With the help of guest performer Gunplay and visionary producer THC, Lamar manages both a vivid autobiography and a compelling thesis about genre in contemporary rap. Oh, and the shit knocks.

As the song opens, the listener is treated to television static, effected synths, a bass drum, and several rapid, clipped TV samples, suggesting that our off-camera protagonist is somewhere channel surfing. “I wanna hit line drives–”, “Wanna lose weight and keep eat–”, “[inaudible]“, “–for you. What–”, “–in my… financial situation”, “ehhhh… [munch, munch, munch, munch] what’s up, doc?” With just these initial choices, the scene has been evocatively — and strangely, and a bit ominously — set. Lamar then sets the terms of the conversation with the track’s first lyrics, a bridge that he (and another track of his own voice, pitched up) rap-sings in a clipped stutter no doubt intentionally reminiscent of the cadence of the TV samples.

Now I was raised… in a sandbox. Next… to you and her
You was holding a handgun… she was… giving birth
To a baby born to be just like you, I-I wonder what’s that… worth?
I-I-I wonder if you-you ever knew that you was a role model to me first?
The next day I-I woke up in the morning, seen you… on the news
Looked in the mirror, then realized that I-I-I had something to prove
You told me, “don’t be like me. Just finish watching… cartoons.“
Which is funny now, ’cause all I see is Wile E. Coyotes in the road
And I run it.

This is followed by a tremendous drop into the song’s hook, which I deal with separately below. Before we get there, though, we have to address just how pregnant with meaning these lines are. Lamar transports us back to his childhood, to the “sandbox”, a setting that conjures all sorts of associations (perhaps the most illuminating from that list are “Sandbox Therapy, a tool used by child psychologists” and a “slang name for the Middle East, used by the American military”). Clearly, this place is metaphorical, perhaps even metaphysical, because Lamar’s discourse is so abstract as to serve as a description of every sandbox ever inhabited by a member of Section.80. This review over at blog The Grey Way summarizes fairly well what “Section 80″ refers to in Lamar’s discourse:

[...] the offspring of the tumultuous, drug-laced, notoriously hostile and violent 80s era where immorality prominently defeated honorable [sic], and the issues living within the Section 8 government program that provided housing to low-income families (that turned to poverty-stricken, riotous ghetto’s)[...] an abundance of self-hate, skepticism-turned-lawlessness and injustice resulting from being media and government institutionalized.

Lamar has stated multiple times (including in the interview part of this video) that his music is aimed at this generation of Americans, those born after 1980 (of which, at age 24, he is a member; I, at age 22, am also a member). He seeks to narrate their past experience and articulate the issues they face currently. This bridge does so concisely and poignantly. “You and her” represent the paradigmatic male and female Section.80 members who would fall prey to “handguns” and “giving birth” (teenage single motherhood, one of the factors that contributes to the “baby” being “born to be just like you”), respectively, as they reached their formative years. For Lamar, this male figure initially served as his “role model”, until he “[saw him] on the news”, presumably shot or imprisoned, at which point he decided that he “had something to prove”, remembering how he told him “don’t be like me”, to “just finish watching cartoons.” This is advice that he apparently took to heart — well, at least the first part of it — because indeed, he now “runs it”, leaving rap’s “Wile E. Coyotes” in his dust.

But just how does he “run it”? Our first hint occurs in that enormous hook, amid THC’s massive bass drum thumps, lushly syncopated hi-hats, and gloomily distorted strings and horns — also, beneath Lamar’s “buck-buck-buck-buck” gun noises, perhaps a nod to the soundtrack he avoided by snubbing his early male role models. The hint’s provided by Gunplay, a rapper from Miami (and a colleague of Rick Ross’) who contributes to the track (more on his contributions below).

[Gunplay:]
Salt all in my wounds
Hear my tears all in my tunes
Let my life loose in this booth just for you
Mahfucker, hope y’all amused

I believe what Lamar has achieved with this track is nothing less than a kind of “State of the Field” analysis of contemporary rap. In this way, the choices he recounts in the opening lines of the song can be interpreted not only as his rejection of a hopeless, self-destructive life path, but also of a nihilistic, artless rap (the kind that The Diplomats, T.I., Gucci Mane, and others all got rich off of in the early-to-mid-2000s) that profits from and glorifies that tragic path. Rap ought to be socially conscious, morally nuanced, and narrative, Lamar argues. But he doesn’t beat this message over the listener’s head. He and Gunplay simply enact (defined in Campbell and Jamieson 1978, previously employed by yours truly in this essay) their genre criticism in their verses.

I’m a maniac when aiming at the enemy that lied
Tell a story that I’ll never grow to 25
Not to worry, every warrior will come and see euphoria
And that’s a covenant I put on every tribe

The enemy here is dominant (white, ruling class) discourse, specifically its claim (and preference) that black Section.80 members “never grow to 25.” (No doubt a reference to Kanye West’s “We Don’t Care”, one of the great black populist anthems of the last 20 years, whose memorable hook proclaimed: “we wasn’t ‘sposed to make it past 25 / joke’s on you, we still alive.”) Lamar is “aiming at” this enemy, rather than at his neighbors and fellow “warriors.” And instead of a “handgun”, he’s using his transgressive art.

Til’ I wreck into a pole like a right to vote
I’m from the bottom of the jungle
Living in the bottom of the food chain
When you get a new chain, nigga take it from you
A new name, want stripes, and you a zebra look alike
Hope another homicide don’t numb you and none do
Things we will never learn soon
In the era where we wanna earn soon
That’s a error, you can smell it in the air and everybody really doomed
[...]
All them days at the county building
Now I’m ’bout to make my mama rich

Lamar’s critique here is fierce and pointed. With the double-entendre “wreck into a pole[/poll] like a right to vote”, he alludes to the political effect of black suffrage in the 1960s, how it forced a positive adjustment by hegemonic dominant culture, an adjustment of the sort that is urgently needed at present. Next, he narrates the experience of living in Compton, of everyday conflicts which frequently end with the participants “zebra lookalikes”–i.e., in prison garb. He discusses the desensitization of ghetto youth to violence (“hope another homocide don’t numb you”), recalling the most heartbreaking moments of The Wire. He even fits in a critique of capitalism as an economic system, arguing that wanting to “earn soon” is an “error” that we can “smell in the air”, in hopelessly polluted urban landscapes, in the widespread feeling that we’re all “doomed” by the greed and immorality of transnational corporations. (For my part, as a resident of Beijing, China, where capitalist development is polluting the skies to a nearly catastrophic extent, these lines pack something of a punch.) He concludes with another personal confession, of collecting public assistance “at the county building,” which, in itself, serves as a critique of the political and economic structures that he seeks to transcend.

KL’s second verse reinforces many of the above critiques. In particular, his narrative description is powerful.

House lick went down perfect
Two shots to the head he deserved it
Overheard it, hit my bed with a bowl and remote control
Dark Wing Duck lost service
Mama said I’d better duck, she’s nervous
Drama all up in the cut, hit the curtains
I mean don’t intervene with no gun machine
This block stay jerking, the feds stay lurkin’
Emerging on everbody corner (dash for it)
Get a toe tag when you play tag with a task of a new (task force)
Everybody wanna know my life
How did I make it (passed yours)
Well let me tell you like this
I’ve been running this shit since (I asked for it)
Cartoons and cereal

Storytelling is something of a lost art in rap, I think. The above scene feels to me like a hybrid of “6b Panorama” by Aesop Rock and “Shakey Dog” by Ghostface Killah — the former for its narrator’s lack of direct involvement, and the latter for its suspense, its action, and its author’s ability to relate minute details with stylistic grace. Lamar’s story works on its own, as a dope narrative, but it also serves as a message to young blacks, to live a truly transgressive life by staying out of this destructive fray. “This block stay jerkin’, the feds stay lurkin’”, he points out; one of the two is bound to destroy you. So how, once again, is Lamar “running it”? By living a nonviolent life, and by using his art in a morally positive and politically transgressive way.

In turning to the song’s final verse, from Gunplay — an artist who typically traffics in just the kind of trap rap discourse that “Cartoons & Cereal” is rejecting — I am reminded of this review of Kanye West’s MBDTF from David Amidon at Pop Matters. Amidon praised Kanye for molding his guests contributions’ to his own rhetorical ends, each one serving to flesh out some unique part his identity, his Self (the description of which being precisely what I argued was the crowning achievement of that record). Amidon wrote:

[On Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,] Jay-Z represents his future, Rick Ross represents his past and his aspirations, Nicki Minaj represents his desires and impulses, Pusha T represents his cold, cold heart.

In the same way, on this track, Gunplay is subsumed within Kendrick’s vision. On his mixtapes — at least the ones I’ve heard — Gunplay sounds mostly like a lesser Dipset crew member. But here, he sounds closer to Scarface in his “On My Block” prime. Within the narrative of “Cartoons & Cereal”, ‘play is the male role model from Lamar’s opening lines, reflecting poignantly on what those choices have brought him.

I did wrong, karma came
Crackers gave me ball and chain
Friends, enemies all the same
State, fed, both can hang
Nobody can mute me, but I never said nobody can’t shoot me
Just another stat to the white folks
Still whip work to the white yolk, absolutely!
Everyday feel like the one before
Hunt the money, don’t hunt the ho
If you do what you always done
Then you get what you always got
You dumb buffoons!
I ain’t seen the back of my eyelids
For about the past 72 hours
Hand on my heart, face to the hood
I pledge every word you ever heard was honest
Yeah this me, no mic
No cameras, no lights, just pain
Mama how much trauma can I sustain?
Dirty money come with lots of stains
Road to riches come with lots of lanes

In a sense, by including this verse, Lamar is saying, don’t just take my word for it. Listen to this guy; he went the other way, and he’s still suffering for it. Gunplay’s still at the trap, “still [whipping] work to the white yolk, absolutely!”, but his descriptions are imbued with a kind of despair, rather than the typical revelry of trap rap; “every day feel like the one before”, he complains. He seems to be directly addressing young Kendrick in the sandbox, saying there’s no turning back for me, but there’s still hope for you, that “dirty money come with lots of stains” but the “road to riches come with lots of lanes”, that young Kendrick still has time to choose a lane that won’t leave him dead or in jail. It is a sign of clear vision on Lamar’s part that he so deftly assimilates Gunplay’s unique style into the song’s argumentative purpose. In this way, “Cartoons & Cereal” merits discussion alongside the very best tracks from MBDTF.

But in other ways, too, “Cartoons & Cereal” merits discussion alongside the classics. THC’s instrumental, alternately tentative and ominous then catastrophic and thunderous — each transition more dramatic than the last — cannot be denied. Meanwhile, the unconventional song structure — bridge, hook, verse, bridge, hook, verse, bridge, verse — reflects the revolutionary nature of Lamar’s argument. And then there are the even subtler details, like the associations conjured by Lamar’s choice of television samples — each one, like “wanna lose weight and keep eat–” or “–in my… financial situation”, demonstrating something rotten about dominant culture and discourse — or the use of backing tracks, like, “Elmer Fudd saying, ‘shoot ‘em down’”, repeated throughout Lamar’s verses. If Looney Tunes is rap, Kendrick Lamar is undoubtedly the Roadrunner, trailed, for the most part, by Wile E. Coyotes and Elmer Fudds. To put it simply, he’s way, way ahead. What I love most about this song is not what it reveals about Lamar the rapper, but what it reveals about Lamar the critic. Because it’s not simply an autobiography; it’s also a genre critique. Most of all, it’s an agenda-setting track, from an artist firing on so many cylinders at once that it’s a wonder (and a privilege) that we can see him at all.

The fairy tale in Netanyahu’s argument for bombing Iran

Let’s look — productively, I hope — at the war rhetoric in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest statements on Iran.

“We’re not standing with a stopwatch in hand,” he said. “It’s not a matter of days or weeks, but also not of years. The result must be removal of the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands.” [...]

“I hope there won’t be a war at all, and that the pressure on Iran will succeed,” the prime minister stressed, noting that his preferred choice would be for Iran to halt its nuclear program and dismantle the uranium enrichment facility located in an underground site near Qom. “That would make me happiest,” he said. “I think every citizen of Israel would be happy.”

“Making decisions isn’t the problem; it’s making the right decision,” Netanyahu added. “If you don’t make the decision and don’t succeed in preventing this [an Iranian nuke], to whom will you explain this – to the historians? To the generations before you, and the generations that won’t come after you?”

What’s happening here is rather straightforward, but worth drawing attention to nonetheless. In short, Netanyahu has constructed a fairy tale conflict frame (Lakoff 1991) grounded in an ideology that Wander (1984) identified as “prophetic dualism” (Ivie 1980 also comes into play here, of course). The basic frame is this: Israel is rational/humane/Good and Iran is irrational/inhumane/Evil. The latter half of that informs the notion of a “threat of nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands”; because Iran is irrational, inhumane, and Evil, it will undoubtedly use its nuclear weapons on innocents, which is the “threat.” Israel, meanwhile, doesn’t want “a war at all”, because it is rational, humane, and Good. Nevertheless, because of its rationality, it is capable of judging “the right decision,” and it has determined, through reason, that the right decision is to bomb Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons (“[if we] make the [wrong] decision and [therefore] don’t succeed in preventing this”). The rhetorical questions that follow (“[will you explain this to] the generations that won’t come after you?”) reinforce the idea that Iran is uniquely Evil, and will thus absolutely use its nukes to commit genocide, unless Someone stands up to Them.

Of course, Bibi’s frame only works on its intended audience because it is not sufficiently educated about the two characters: the Noble Hero, Israel (with the US always looming massively in the background) and the Ignoble Villain, Iran. So let’s discuss what this dichotomy conceals about our two sides.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is alleged, in 2005, to have said that he wanted Israel to be “wiped off the map.” This is a trope continually employed to enlarge the Iranian Villain, and it is implicit in Netanyahu’s statements. But Middle East politics scholar and blogger Juan Cole has convincingly disputed this translation:

I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having “threatened to wipe Israel off the map.” I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel’s Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.

But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Jewish Holocaust is similarly overstated. His main claim is that the Holocaust was (and continues to be) exploited to justify the creation of Israel and the dispossession of the Palestinians, which is not inherently anti-Semitic (there are even some Israelis who hold a similar view on uses of the Holocaust in political argumentation; see Gideon Levy below). Many in the Arab world (see findings on Israel in the Arab public opinion poll I link to below) and much of the political left in the West (including most of our academia) hold this view vis-à-vis Israel-Palestine.

Nevertheless, justificatory rhetoric in Israel and the US continually relies on these tropes to construct the Iranian government and military as an irrational, inhumane, and Evil Villain, consistently implying (as in, “the generations that won’t come after you“) that it is poised to commit genocide once it gains nuclear weapons. The irony, of course, is that Iran’s military has not committed genocide once in modern history, while the US and Israel have arguably committed or contributed to multiple genocides. As Haaretz’ Gideon Levy put it last week,

To compare Nazi Germany to Iran, to compare Munich to Tehran, is to minimize and trivialize the Holocaust. But the Jews of America love it, this improper use of the memory of the Holocaust. People in Israel even love it. According to a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute – published by Haaretz about two months ago – 98 percent of Israelis pointed to the Holocaust as their most important guiding principle. That is the outcome of Netanyahu’s speeches. But what does 1944 have to do with 2012? What does Hitler have to do with Ahmadinejad?

Such casual exploitation of historical tragedy warrants the label “irrational.” Meanwhile, for Iran, acquiring nuclear weapons is a perfectly rational strategic goal. The following nations, other than the United States and Israel, possess nukes: Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Since gaining nukes, none of these nations have experienced violent regime change at the hands of an external power. Hence, the Iranian regime is rational to want nukes, because they want assurance that they won’t be dethroned from without, especially in light of growing subversive elements within. Most of all, they remember what happened to the Mosaddegh government in 1953, and they want protection against a similar fate.

Now, suffice it to say, the way the Iranian regime treats the aforementioned subversive elements is inhumane, and perhaps (one could argue) Evil. But this is only one aspect of the regime, and such crackdowns occur in the US as well, though less violently. (To be fair, the US (probably…) doesn’t fix elections, an important distinction between our two sides. But domestic policy must be considered in tandem with international policy when judging a government, as in the rest of this paragraph.) In any event, domestic politics are only one aspect of a given regime; in the foreign policy sphere, the US and Israel are probably neck-and-neck with Iran on inhumanity and Evilness (here’s one crucial recent example), and if what Glenn Greenwald terms “Endless War” continues apace they will easily surpass it. Certainly, Iran has not devoted nearly so much energy, resources, and rhetoric to killing non-citizens (and citizens) as Israel and the US have throughout modern history. Iran’s only real accomplishments in foreign meddling have been achieved indirectly, and as a rule Iran’s clerics maintain a non-interventionist foreign policy.

All of these factors help contribute to wild disparities of opinion between the Western world and the Arab world about which side is a Hero, and which is a Villain. Compare the views embedded in Netanyahu’s rhetoric to those observed in this new poll of Arab public opinion conducted by the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies.

Contrary to mainstream global media coverage, 73 per cent of those polled see Israel and the US as the two most threatening countries. Five per cent see Iran as the most threatening, a percentage that varies between countries and regions. [...]

When it comes to WMD, 55 per cent support a region free of nuclear weapons and 55 per cent see Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons as justifying there [sic] possession by other countries in the region.

With such antithetical views prevailing among Arabs, how is it that Bibi’s (and Barry’s) statements hold water with Israeli and Western audiences? Surely, recent historical changes in the average Western person’s connection to war — changes such as those elaborated in this volume — are relevant, and must be contrasted with the experiences of Arabs living on the frontlines (see Lagerquist 2009 for a relevant study). The Obama presidency also seems to be historically significant for its perpetuation (and innovation) of various Bush-era nationalist and anti-Terrorist discourse frames, despite a somewhat discursively transgressive campaign from Candidate Obama (Ivie 2009). And politically, President Obama has enshrined as bipartisan consensus numerous Terrorism policies that were controversial under Bush, muting dissent among US progressives.

In the West, the result of all this is that dichotomous framing barely even registers as problematic anymore. This is a significant consequence of the last three-and-a-half years of Western military and rhetorical encounters with the Middle East under the direction of Obama and Netanyahu, and it should be kept in mind when evaluating both governments. Iran would be suicidal to use its nuclear weapons on Israel, and it is not suicidal, and all educated people realize this, but current rhetoric justifying an Israeli or US attack treats as self-evident the proposition that Iran will do so. This myth, in turn, serves to support a fairy tale conflict frame consisting of an Israeli Hero and an Iranian Villain. But fairy tales are for children. Now is the time for responsible adults the world over to develop a robust and widespread anti-war rhetoric, committed to shedding light on the numerous nuances which undermine the cynical and condescending frames of our elected public warmongers.

Character and narrative in Tyler, the Creator’s BASTARD and GOBLIN

GOBLIN, the latest release from founding OFWGKTA member Tyler, the Creator, has drawn a number of negative reactions thanks to what many perceive as Tyler “doubling down” on the lyrical and aesthetic content of 2009′s BASTARD without adequately addressing the moral questions (such as mine) that have been raised about that content. However, I’m going to argue that by placing both GOBLIN and BASTARD within a narrative frame, Okonma (the creator of the Creator, if you will) offers a clear response to our moral questions and achieves a notable artistic feat to boot: he tells a captivating and terrifying story through music.

The fact that this is my second time writing about the rhetorical ethics of OFWGKTA’s discourse may have already signalled that I find the problematic nature of it compelling. The question I want to ask is this: when Tyler, the Creator says, for instance, “faggot” (“spat so sharply that you can practically feel the disdain”), what exactly does that utterance do? There seems to be a tendency to conceive its effect as entirely destructive. But might it not also serve as a wake-up call for young homophobes, by demonstrating the viciousness of the word and the moral repugnance of directing it at homosexuals? It may seem far-fetched to suggest that such a demonstration could be intentional on Tyler’s part (and indeed, that is not at all what I’m going to argue), but to me, one thing is certain: Tyler, the Creator, himself, is not to blame if those who hear his hateful rhetoric fail to notice that there’s anything wrong with it. First, such an (admittedly terrible) effect would be more accurately viewed as a symptom of larger, more pressing structural problems — saliently, an ever-increasing stratification of education, opportunity, and material wealth — confronting the American society that created those listeners. And second, Tyler, the Creator himself cannot rightly be blamed for such an effect, because Tyler, the Creator himself is a character in a narrative universe constructed by the artist Tyler Okonma.

The central characters in this narrative are Tyler, the Creator (played by Okonma) and his therapist, Dr. TC (played by Okonma with his vocal pitched way down). The story begins at the very beginning of BASTARD, at the start of Tyler’s dialogue with Dr. TC, an ongoing confession addressing Tyler’s fears, aspirations, regrets, cynicism, and rage. (On BASTARD‘s eponymous opening track, Dr. TC says, “Um, it’s gonna be three sessions: today, tomorrow, and Wednesday”, presumably referring to BASTARD, GOBLIN, and Okonma’s next record, which according to Wikipedia will be titled WOLF and is slated for a 2012 release.) The narrative is not totally consistent throughout all of BASTARD, although the two tracks that bookend it, “Bastard” and “Inglorious” (a film reference that I approve of), contribute a lot. One particularly important passage from the former is this:

Raquel treat me like my father, like a fucking stranger
She still don’t know I made ‘Sarah’ to strangle her
Not put her in danger and chop her up in the back of a Wrangler
All because she said no to homecoming, demons running
Inside my head telling me evil thoughts.

This excerpt illustrates the importance of the distinction between Tyler, the Creator and Okonma. On the one hand, as a confession of the pain that his rejection by his father and his love interests caused him, it foreshadows much of the vitriol and physical harm that Tyler pays each back throughout the remainder of BASTARD and GOBLIN; on the other, the question must be asked: who really “made ‘Sarah’”, Tyler or Okonma? I would argue that the former did, because I view Tyler as an identity constructed in each of the texts, one that is distinct from the artist Okonma (who does much more than simply communicate the language encoded on each track). In other words, I view “Tyler” as a linguistic entity of the narrative encoded within BASTARD and GOBLIN, and I view Okonma as a human entity of the larger social world in which those records exist. Thus, if Tyler is an entity of the songs, then clearly he is the one who “made ‘Sarah’”, a character who shows up on BASTARD primarily so that he can abuse her physically. Tyler (the character) creates and abuses female characters in his rap as a way of coping with his deep-seated feelings of female rejection.

But hold on!, you may object. If Okonma is this human entity of the world, the one who wrote much of this music and virtually all of these lyrics (save for guest verses), and who uttered them in the recording sessions and utters them in live performances, how is he not the one who “made ‘Sarah’”? My claim is that he did make “Sarah”, only indirectly. What Okonma did is he made Tyler make “Sarah.” And thus, Tyler’s decision to make “Sarah” and do horrific things to her is characterization and exposition on Okonma’s part. It contributes to an ongoing identity construction (Tyler, the Creator) and story (BASTARD-GOBLIN-WOLF) that is disturbing, frightening, and quite sad. This notion — that Okonma made Tyler make “Sarah” — is the response that I mentioned at the top, the response Okonma offers to the ethical concerns of critics. How effective or redemptive a response it is, more likely than not, is an open question. But I believe there is little question — and the discourse of GOBLIN, we shall see, reinforces this — that this is his response.

As I mentioned above, BASTARD‘s final track “Inglorious” contributes some crucial characterization, including the following lines: “My father died the day I came out of my mother’s hole / And left a burden on my soul until I was old enough / To understand that the fucking faggot didn’t like me much.” Clearly, apparently, the roots of Tyler’s rage on BASTARD is his father’s abandonment, a formative event, a rhetorical situation, to which the entire record is a reaction. Indeed, that could be one reason for the choice to reference the film Inglourious Basterds (2009), a film whose dramatic climax is the moment when Adolf Hitler’s brains are blown out. For Tyler, the only realistic point of comparison for his father’s evil is that of the leader of the Third Reich, and using these lyrics to discursively murder him is as cathartic an experience as murdering Adolf Hitler was for the Bear Jew. The song’s hook goes, “Fuck you (I’m good) / Fuck you (I graduated) / Without you (I’m good) / Fuck you (I’m good)”, suggesting that this is the moment when Tyler unburdens himself from his rage towards his father and, potentially, moves on.

GOBLIN bears that suggestion out, as, despite a passing reference or two to his father, it sees Tyler refocusing his discursive energies almost exclusively on women and sex, two problems that seem, if possible, even more dire in his life. “She”, “Transylvania”, “Her”, and “Analog” form a suite of songs about Tyler’s experience of female rejection, his longing for female companionship, and the ways in which these factors have led him to hate women and express his hatred through acts of brutality. “She” is a creepy little parable, co-authored by OFWGKTA R&B crooner Frank Ocean, of Tyler’s stalking and terrorizing a girl; the catch is that in this case, he’s doing it out of a kind of twisted love. Ocean’s hook goes: “Blinds wide open so he can / see you in the dark when you’re sleepin’ / [...] Check your window / He’s at your window.” Later, Tyler confesses: “1, 2, you’re the girl that I want / 3, 4, 5-6-7, shit / 8 is the bullets if you say no after all this / And I just couldn’t take it you’re so motherfucking gorgeous”, and: “I just wanna drag your lifeless body to the forest / and fornicate with it but that’s because I’m in love with you / Cunt.” In a sense, Tyler’s language encodes something quite monstrous here, but his argument is still, at root: “I like you, and I want you to like me back.” He asks his love to “meet [him] by the lake”, and we will see that “the lake” is a critical place throughout this record, as it’s where he wants his women to meet him (“She” and “Analog”), where he fishes them out of (“Fish”), and where he dumps their bodies (“Transylvania”). The bottom line for “She” is that it deepens our understanding of Tyler’s thoroughly unhealthy orientation towards women, love, and sex.

As I say, “the lake” reappears often, first on the downright gothic “Transylvania”, a track which reads a bit like an absurdist, maximalist parody of the typical hip-hop song about girls and getting them. In Tyler’s fucked up mind, “I’ve got hoes in different area codes” becomes “I’m Dracula, bitch / Don’t got a problem smackin’ a bitch / Kidnappin’, attackin’ wit’ axes and shit / Until she decides to take Dracula’s dick.” Later, Tyler basically issues a big, stinking “fuck you” to women around the world who have struggled for individuality, equality, and justice: “Goddamn I love bitches / Especially when they only suck dick and wash dishes”, he cackles. Throughout the song, Okonma’s vocals are pitched way, way down (at a frequency distinct from Dr. TC’s, though), which contributes to my sense that this is a fictitious character, perhaps a comedic one. That sense is unlikely to bring feminists any closer to accepting the song’s content, though. (And this is a telling example of how Okonma’s art is indiscriminately transgressive. The character he plays, Tyler, the Creator, is a homophobe and a sexist, so he offends the left, but he is also a young, foul-mouthed, fearless black man who frequently brandishes a gun, so he offends the right as well. People on the left believe that their orthodoxies were hard won and thus ought to be protected and cherished, but the very fact that they are orthodoxies compels Tyler to flout them — that’s just who he is. Okonma deliberately crafted him that way, to piss everyone off. More on this below.) On the song’s outro, Tyler yells: “Bite her in her fucking neck / Bite her in her fucking neck / Bottom of the fucking lake / Bottom of the fucking lake.” Thus, “the lake” seems to also be a thoroughly sinister place, a place where Tyler dumps his lovers’ bodies when he’s done with them. For Tyler, love, sex, and violence are so thoroughly entangled that it can be difficult to tell what’s a love song, what’s a fuck song, and what’s a song that requires our clear and unequivocal condemnation from a moral point-of-view. (For me, none fall into the latter category, because again, Tyler is a character on my reading. But I cannot presuppose that, I must demonstrate it. Onward.)

“Her”, perhaps even more than “She”, is a love song. More specifically, it’s a sad ballad about the love that Tyler feels toward a girl, and how she fails to reciprocate. “(It’s this girl) / She lives next door / to the store I loiter at / We talk every night / She cry to me about her guy / And if we text I get pissed when I get no reply.” Lines like these see Tyler opening up about his feelings towards girls in ways certainly not seen on BASTARD. One particularly telling admission is, “her name is my password.” And later:

I know to y’all I come off as rough
But I’m the nicest to her and I just want to concur
A relation. I want the cheesy dates at the movies
And stupid walks on the beach, and sharing straws in a cup
I never had that.

And the ballad’s conclusion:

My nigga ask, “Ace, what happened to such and such?”
I could slander her name, and then tell him I probably fucked
Or I could tell him the truth, and just say she ain’t like me much
But instead I lie and say she moved to Nebraska.

This song works a bit like an origin story for the womanizing, woman-hating, liberal-riling Tyler we know all too well. It would seem that the Tyler portrayed on “Her” was open to the idea of love and sex without hatred and violence. We are led to extrapolate, however, that years of festering resentment since the time when these events broke his heart produced the misogynistic villain portrayed on “Transylvania” and “Bitch Suck Dick” (a song I won’t cover in-depth but that reinforces many of my points), even the evil Tyler who shows up on tracks that aren’t strictly about girls such as “Tron Cat” and finale “Golden” (more on this one below). The final song in the Tyler-on-women suite, “Analog”, seems to be located temporally somewhere near “Her”, because it finds Tyler (with vocals pitched down again) still attempting courtship but not yet blatantly injecting violence and misogyny into that effort, as he does on “She.” Choice lines do suggest something sinister being afoot, such as “I can grab the fireworks, the soda, all the cookies we can eat / Make you nauseous but be cautious, this is not Dawson’s Creek”, and “Look, you know, the water’s pretty deep, let’s go to sleep.” Perhaps he is even suggesting that she and him commit suicide (a common theme in Tyler’s raps) together, but this scenario does not seem to involve rape or even (necessarily) murder. He seems to want some kind of connection with this girl, no matter how superficial, and that places it closer to “Her” than “She.” The song’s refrain, of course, is “meet me by the lake.”

Thus, the Tyler-on-women subplot seems to begin with “Her”, with Tyler having a massive crush on this one girl, trying to get with her, and discovering that she will only ever like him as a friend. Later, he parties by the lake on “Analog” and attempts to invite a different girl there with him, suggesting that if she doesn’t fuck him he will either kill her or force her to commit suicide with him. It’s unclear what ultimately transpired, but it’s a safe bet that our female antagonist was not pleased with the outcome. He still chases girls on “She” but he is unable to do so without including blatant threats (“8 is the bullets if you say no after all this”) and slurs (“cunt”). Finally, on “Transylvania” he is at the point where he no longer gives a fuck, and thus he openly admits to graphic acts of violence towards women in a sexual context. It all goes back, though, to the rejection he suffered in “Her”, a rejection that unfortunately led him to paint all women with the same vengeful, immoral, sexist brush.

The third strain of characterization Okonma offers us (in addition to daddy issues and lady issues), which is significant to GOBLIN‘s finale track “Golden”, is a general disdain for prevailing norms, whether they be religious, political, social, or even musical. On death-focused track “Nightmare”: “My only problem was death / Fuck Heaven, I ain’t showin’ no religion respect.” On album-leading single “Yonkers”: “This ain’t no V-Tech shit or Columbine / But after bowling I went home for some damn Adventure Time” (a frequent motif in Tyler’s raps is school shootings, often played for laughs or shock, thus demonstrating his lack of reverence for what still is a major political news cycle issue in the United States). On eponymous opener “Goblin”: “But they don’t get it, ’cause it’s not made for them / The nigga that’s in the mirror rapping, it’s made for him” (Tyler turning away from social approval and interaction). And of course there is the frequent catchphrase “Fuck 2DopeBoyz”, referring to an influential music blog that opted not to promote OFWGKTA and subsequently became an enemy of the group, and the even more frequent use of offensive linguistic strings such as “faggot”, “cunt”, and numerous recombinations thereof, to say nothing of Tyler’s ability to toe the line between frightening and laughable in his invocations of murder (often of the school shooting variety), suicide, patricide, rape, and other forms of abuse of women. It is safe to say that Tyler rejects the society he lives in, and feels outright disdain for its norms.

These three issues, no doubt interrelated in ways I haven’t covered here, contribute to Tyler, the Creator’s out-and-out emotional breakdown in the final tracks of GOBLIN. He guns down most of his fellow OFWGKTA members at the end of “Window.” He also brandishes a weapon on final track “Golden”*. Here, Okonma takes us deep inside Tyler’s deranged mind, recalling Scorsese’s Travis Bickle as much as Nolan’s Joker :

I’m a grab the Nina and find a nice arena
‘Cause I can’t even choose between Ortega or Sabrina
And I’m not even human, I’m a body shaped demon
With some semen in my sack and some problems in the back
And a life that’s fill with crap, and a finger filled with hate
And a gat that’s filled with love, now that opposites attract
I can finally be one like a marriage in a church
But this marriage has a hearse and the parents of the one
That’s getting married has a curse and it’s made up inside of him
Too late to reimburse but, wait, it gets worse
All the guests that’s in the church, all decided to disperse
So there was nobody who could stop the wedding with converse
So they tied the knot, now it’s too late to reverse
This arrangement and the nurse is amazed at the hurt
That he was painting but it was obvious in all the photos
He was paining, now a bunch of whispering immerse.

What transpires next is that the nurse gives him a heavy dose of sedatives and Tyler asks, “why didn’t anybody ask him first? / Because nobody gave a fuck” as he fades away, into “the lake.” Then, the final thirty seconds of the album are directed by Dr. TC, who responds:

Someone gave a fuck Tyler,
And, uh, the person that gave a fuck was me.
See, you’re not… going crazy. It’s me, I’m your best friend Tyler.
I know everything. I know everything about you.
You’ve been helping yourself this whole time.
Your friends, they’re just figments of your imagination.
Dr. TC. See Tyler, I’m your conscience.
I’m Tron Cat. I’m Ace. I’m Wolf Haley. I’m…

A brief pause follows, until at normal frequency, Tyler says a single word into the reverb, the echo, and the silence: “me.”

What is our takeaway from GOBLIN‘s ending, with its plot twist on the level of Mulholland Dr. or Fight Club? Broadly, I’d argue that it supports my view that Okonma is making fiction, just in an unusual context: within the lyrical and instrumental milieu of the rap genre — indeed, he’s recombined its tropes in ways that make us alternately grimace, giggle, and go slack-jawed at his innovation and talent (“Tron Cat” comes to mind). But to my mind there’s little doubt that GOBLIN and BASTARD are deliberately crafted narratives. On BASTARD, the main story arc involved Tyler-and-his-father. On GOBLIN, it’s Tyler-and-women as well as Tyler-and-society. The album’s stunning conclusion sees his many flaws overwhelm him to the point of emotional breakdown, leading him to murder many of his closest friends. To stop the violence from escalating further, Dr. TC and his nurse knock him out. But in his sedative-induced stupor, Tyler comes to realize that there is no Dr. TC, that he is really a figment of his imagination (perhaps TC stands for “Tyler’s conscience” or “Tyler Creator”). And in the album’s final seconds, he comes to realize that he himself is a character, a constructed identity. This is a postmodernist literary device that, among other things, reflects fresh meaning and significance onto the events preceding it in the narrative structure of GOBLIN and BASTARD. Tyler is and always has been a character, we find, and he’s been creating all the other characters as a way of working through his emotional and psychological flaws.

How deep does it go? How far does it spread? Is Tyler’s Twitter stream in character? What about his behavior in public and his stage performances? I’d have to say it’s all affected. What we’ve come to realize is that Tyler is no different than MF Doom, really — he’s just a more visceral, believable version, and that’s what makes him more frightening. He’s a young black man capable of despicable, violent acts. Dominant American society, both left and right, is utterly unable to square its perspective on Okonma’s work with its biggest fear: that there are real young men of color out there like Tyler, the Creator, that their outright hatred for social norms and white America is what drives them, that they have no qualms with engaging in brutal, vengeful violence. What they fear the most — that Tyler is real — is what they choose to believe. But behind the veil of Twitter and iTunes, I believe Okonma is laughing at them, and so is Tyler. Tyler, the Creator is a monster borne out of the quagmire of contemporary social life, but ironically, that society has come out looking far more monstrous than its demon spawn; one need look no further than at its reaction to Okonma’s art, which misses completely the narrative dynamics at work in favor of a paternalistic and Othering interpretation of Tyler as some new form of “evil.” That reaction is exactly what Okonma wants, and it is in that and other rhetorical elements of his work that he emerges as a formidable voice in contemporary art and literature.

*I have not yet settled on a firm interpretation of this reference, Golden Goblin. It conveys something villainous, which must’ve been intentional, but I’m not sure where it comes from and Google/Wikipedia have been little help. Tyler’s descent into villainous madness as the record progresses recalls the origin story of the Green Goblin from Spider-Man, but that doesn’t seem to be the reference. I’d be curious to hear others’ thoughts on this question.

“I’m doin’ me”: toward an aesthetic theory of contemporary rap (part one)

What am I doin’? What am I doin’?
Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m doin’ me
I’m doin’ me
I’m livin’ life right now, man
And this what I’m a do ’til it’s over.
-Drake, “Over”, Thank Me Later (2010)

There seems to be a current obsession with death and finiteness in rap music. Or perhaps it’s always been there. I’m not a hip-hop historian, just a rap fan with an interest in texts and how they work. Recall my essay from late last year about Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; one constant feature of that record was Kanye’s baldly addressing the certainty of his own demise, often with a spirit of revelry. That seems to have been a significant rhetorical exigency for ‘Ye last year (maybe a residual effect of losing his mother in 2007?), because it was visible not just on his solo efforts but on many of his collaborations, such as the Rick Ross song “Live Fast, Die Young”, which he both produced and performed on. The chorus of that jam goes, memorably: “we gon’ be living like this for the rest of our lives / you know, we gon’ be living like this for the rest of tonight.” Perhaps a realization of his own finiteness explains, in general, West’s absurdly prolific 2010, when from August-October he released a new song every Friday, in addition to releasing a full-length solo record and working on numerous other artists’ projects throughout the year.

One such artist was Drake, the Toronto-based heartthrob whose 2009-2010 — which saw the release of his So Far Gone mixtape and Thank Me Later LP (with two songs produced by West) — changed the complexion of popular music considerably. In a sense, Drake created his own subgenre of rap, one in which singing your own hook is not just permitted but encouraged, in which sensitivity to the feelings and aspirations of women is embraced, in which talking candidly about a life lacking criminal activity can still be swagged out. Of course, on some level Kanye did each of those things before Drake (an influence that Drake has acknowledged), but Drake’s ability to let his emotional guard down lends him a unique presence on a track. The reason I bring up Drizzy, though, is that death haunts his lyrics as much it does ‘Ye’s. Observe: “I’m livin’ life right now, man / And this what I’m a do ’til it’s over” (“Over”); “Thank me later, yeah I know what I said / But sometimes later never comes, so instead / It’s uh… okay, you can thank me now” (“Thank Me Now”); “I just hope that you miss me a little when I’m gone” (“Miss Me”); “And when you get to talkin’ ’bout the greatest I just really hope that / You think of me [x3] / ‘Cause I’m trying to be unforgettable” (“Unforgettable”). Here is an artist deeply concerned about doing things the right way while he’s here so that he’s remembered the right way once he’s So Far Gone.

Wiz Khalifa, meanwhile, was trafficking in mixtapes around the same time as Drake, and even before him, but only recently gained national recognition, thanks to de facto Pittsburgh Steelers fight song “Black and Yellow.” Two weeks ago, he released his major label debut, Rolling Papers, on which “Black and Yellow” appears. Wiz’s lyrical style is all chilled-out, weeded-out monotone; as cokemachineglow‘s Colin McGowan puts it, Wiz is “more concerned with melody than verbal gymnastics” (though I would personally replace “rhythm” with “melody” in that statement). But the opening track of the record, “When I’m Gone”, communicates a lot, and that’s where I want to direct critical attention. This is probably the most somber track Wiz has ever done, and that’s because, like Drake and Kanye, he finds himself staring down the barrel of each passing moment: “I’m gonna spend it all / Why wait for another day? / I’m ‘a take all this money I own / And blow it all away / ‘Cause I can’t take it when I’m gone.”

Textually, what is being said on all these death-obsessed joints is something more fundamental than just fear of dying, I think, and it can be teased out further by looking at a later Rolling Papers track, “The Race.” Here, Wiz’s melodic hook proclaims, “I’m ridin’ ’round / Smokin’, my music all loud / Kinda do my thing, no disrespect to the niggas before me / [...] Now I just stunt on my own / Now I just stunt on my own.” A first pass reading of these lyrics might argue that Khalifa’s talking about the cutthroat nature of competition in rap leading him to adopt a “looking out for number one” attitude. But I think it’s a more abstract statement than that. I think “The Race” is a reflexive commentary on the production of song within the particular generic and cultural context that “Wiz Khalifa”, the public figure and textually-constructed identity, exists. Much of the song’s lyrics are about the life that accompanies rap, including his relationship to his peers; this is the “generic and cultural context” to which I refer. So at root, this is a song about itself.

Thus, the first broad aesthetic pattern of contemporary rap I want to draw attention to in this two-part essay series is reflexivity. This manifests itself as what one might call metarap: songs about their own production, from the process of creating to the social and cultural baggage that process entails. Each of the texts examined thus far, while containing lyrics confessing to its author’s awareness of death, is more fundamentally an instance of this metarap. Death is a particular manifestation of a more abstract notion of finiteness, and that finiteness is a necessary feature of song. Thus Drake is quite literally “doing” him “’til it’s over”–’til the song is. Wiz is going to “take all this money” he owns “and throw it all away”, ’cause the “Wiz” of the song, obviously, cannot do so once it ends and you’re listening to something else. And Kanye West and Rick Ross are “gon’ be livin’ like this for the rest of” the time that your attention is on “Live Fast, Die Young”, and not a single moment longer.

In this way, songs can be thought of as finite recordings of a particular, finite segment of a finite life lived by their creators. This kaleidoscopic view which contemporary rap presents is why, to me, it is the genre of music most amenable to postmodernist criticism. Meaningful rap achieves that particular effect by reflecting on its own creation, a reflection which in turn reflects the fragmented and finite nature of lived human experience. Symbol use can only go so far toward communicating the Self, but by using media to mediate the process of mediation, canonical contemporary rap affords critics a fleeting glimpse of it. In my opinion, that’s stuntin’.

The “international coalition” in Libya: snapshots of Obama’s rhetoric of open secrecy

This piece distills some of my preliminary mental observations following the Obama Administration’s (unconstitutional) authorization of the use of military force in Libya. Events there are progressing rapidly, and as a result, this post may look stupid, say, next week. However, I’m willing to risk that embarrassment in order to highlight a distinction in the war rhetorics of the Bush and Obama Administrations, one that is possibly significant and has certainly not yet been explicitly described.

Justin Elliott at Salon, in a compelling rhetorical analysis (in spirit, if not in name), notices a troubling disconnect between the public statements of the Obama Administration and the facts on the ground in the quickly-escalating Western war against Gaddafi in Libya:

An emphatic part of the White House messaging about the bombing in Libya is that the operation is truly international in character.

But it’s quickly becoming clear that the bombing campaign — at least so far — is almost entirely an American operation, albeit one that has been packaged to give it an international look. It’s a dissonance that brings back memories of George W. Bush’s much-mocked “coalition of the willing.”

The rhetoric from the administration has consistently referred to the U.S. playing a “support” role in a large coalition. As Hillary Clinton said yesterday in France, referring to the Security Council resolution that authorizes protection of civilians in Libya: “So let me be very clear about the position of the United States: We will support an international coalition [emphasis Elliott's] as it takes all necessary measures to enforce the terms of Resolution 1973.”

President Obama, in what was obviously a carefully choreographed move, did not himself announce the beginning of the bombing. Indeed, when the news was announced by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Obama was on an uncanceled trip to Brazil.

Obama’s brief statement from Brasilia referred to a “broad coalition” that “brings together many of our European and Arab partners.” He said he had authorized “military action in Libya in support of an international effort.” Obama used the words “international” and “coalition” a total of ten times in a statement that lasted just three minutes. [...]

But strikes by over 100 American cruise missiles quickly followed the French action, and early Sunday morning a slew of American planes — including B2s, F-15s, F-16s, Navy EA-18G electronic warfare planes and Marine attack jets, according to the AP — bombed Libya. It’s not clear whether any Arab nations — some of which supported the Security council resolution — have contributed military support at this point.

As an addendum to Elliott’s last point, the BBC notes that “Qatar says it will join the campaign against Libya – the first Arab country to do so.” However, this actually bolsters Elliott’s claim that there is a disconnect between government discourse about the military effort and the military effort itself.

For me, the secrecy enshrouding the dominant American role in this mission calls to mind the equivalent fogs of ongoing combat in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. But it’s a peculiar kind of secrecy that’s being enacted in each of these cases. Indeed, I would argue that a rhetoric of open secrecy — a complex discursive style combining linguistic and non-linguistic elements — informs many, if not all, instances of war-justificatory discourse coming from the Obama Administration today.

This rhetoric of open secrecy — like the operations of the United States military — is complex and diffuse. A truly enlightening criticism (like Elliott’s) of Obama’s speech in Brazil would not restrict itself to the words he used, but would also address how they interfaced with his concurrent actions as commander-in-chief. The cliché “actions speak louder than words” alludes to the way in which actions themselves — especially today, as every movement of the powerful is instantaneously reported upon by a 24-hour global news cycle and subsequently dispersed and dissected by a highly-engaged and always-connected online deliberative community — communicate, and thus are rhetorical.

With his words in Brazil, Obama addressed several discrete publics, or audiences: an American people who increasingly dislikes the Afghanistan war and has long since agreed that the Iraq War was a mistake, an international intellectual class who condemns almost all of the current operations of the American national security state, an Arab street tired of being controlled both by nearby autocrats and faraway empires, the international oil economy, and probably others. But with his actions, Obama addressed another, more diffuse audience: those who would contravene American hegemony in the world. I believe it is this audience, and thus this rhetorical focus, that has so far eluded commentary and scholarship on the Obama Administration.

Such a rhetorical focus is informed by the realization — and subsequent panic — among the permanent factions in Washington that the United States no longer maintains a qualitative economic advantage over the rest of the world. In the near future, rapidly growing economies in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa will no doubt greatly diminish the importance of the US on the global stage. But Obama’s military actions — largely informed by the standard neo-conservative foreign policy handbook — comprise an attempt to convince imperial rivals, by “showing, not telling”, to obey US will.

In effect, then, Libya — like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and even Afghanistan and Iraq — is in one sense a war game. It is the latest instantiation of a complex rhetoric of open secrecy, one which encourages supporters of the sitting president to endorse his actions due to the positive nature of their accompanying words, while encouraging “enemies” of the United States (in truth, opponents of US foreign policy) to hear the louder communicative intentions of their accompanying actions. Right now, people around the world are arguing over whether Washington is engaging in imperial sprawl or humanitarian intervention in Libya. Rhetorically, it’s doing both, and that ought to scare anyone who favors transparency in democratic governance.

OFWGKTA: confounding both “White America” and the critical process

White girl, you could ask her what the dick be like
At Monster Madness doin’ drive-bys on a fuckin’ fixie bike
Fuckin’ morons snortin’ oxycontin wearin’ cotton
Oxymoron, like buff faggots playin’ sissy dykes
-Tyler, the Creator, “AssMilk (feat. Earl Sweatshirt)”

Tyler, the Creator, leader of en vogue (at least on the Internet) L.A. rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA), has openly stated that one of his main artistic goals is to transgress. “Time To Scare White America”, he proclaimed in advance of his appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, his first spot on national television. This transgressive streak manifests itself in Tyler’s texts (and also, notably, those of OFWGKTA’s second most talented member, Earl Sweatshirt) as ubiquitous homophobia and sexism, frequently communicated through images of rape and murder. There is an open question (and perhaps a future essay) as to what specifically is transgressive about OFWGKTA’s rhetoric — after all, homophobia and sexism have existed in rap since almost the beginning, and hetero-normative ideology (which encompasses both attitudes) is certainly being circulated within the most representative texts of the genre today. But what I want to ask in this essay, generally, is what are the implications of these texts for criticism? How should they be evaluated, both as aesthetic works and as instances of public rhetoric? (And should they be evaluated as both of those things?) And what do they suggest to critics of rhetoric and of art about their responsibilities as critics?

If I were to evaluate Tyler’s music solely on its aesthetic qualities — from its rhythmic and melodic consonance (as well as the occasional, thematically crucial dissonance) to the sharp wit of its language and the emotional depth of its overarching narrative — I would conclude that, for example, Tyler’s late-2009 release Bastard is an exemplary work in the genre and a new artistic template for rap and indie music in general. But, as other critics have correctly noted (see also here for an aesthetic criticism), doing this and only this within one’s analysis is tricky.

The review linked above from Calum Marsh at cokemachineglow frames the relevant moral issues this way: “whether you love it or you hate it, [Bastard] demands that you confront its questionable content and either reject it or reconcile yourself to it. ‘Just liking it’ isn’t an option.” Turning to the album’s specific content, Marsh confesses,

“when Tyler threatens to ‘kill you if I find out you’re watching other movies, bitch,’ [on Bastard track "VCR"] that ‘bitch’ becomes a vitriolic ‘bitch,’ [emphasis Marsh's] spat so sharply that you can practically feel the disdain. This is part of what makes Tyler’s delivery technically good—he’s a perfectly competent rapper, in general—but it’s also a major reason listening to Bastard can be a pretty uncomfortable and unenjoyable experience. With Tyler it’s always ‘faggot‘ and ‘bitch‘ punctuating everything, each imbued with so much hate that whether he genuinely hates women or homosexuals or whomever else seems secondary to the fact that when he spits it like that, you really feel like he does.”

As Marsh’s analysis notes, the content of OFWGKTA’s music inevitably provokes feelings of resistance among listeners of conscience. For myself, as an avid consumer of various types of media, objects in which aesthetic excellence is complicated by ethical wrong are almost never this difficult to reconcile. The work of many of the independent filmmakers associated with the Dogme 95 movement — such as Lars von Trier and Harmony Korine — come to mind. In my opinion — and this may be an unfair generalization, but anyhow, it is my current view — those artists’ works do not offer enough aesthetic excellence to outweigh their ethical wrongs, chief among these being the gratuitous torture and rape of female characters to no seeming aesthetic end. But, as I say, and as my (brief) aesthetic analysis above suggests, OFWGKTA’s work displays artistry, intelligence, wit, and even charm. Nevertheless, it glorifies the same things von Trier does, just in a more elegant manner.

This tension gives way to a larger tension between the purposes of aesthetic criticism and those of rhetorical criticism. With the rise of the humanities wing of Rhetoric (whose patron saint is still Edwin Black of the University of Wisconsin-Madison) in the 1960s, a variety of new methodological approaches and objects of study emerged in published rhetorical criticism. Underlying this systemic change was a new categorical imperative for the work: praise the (ethically) good and condemn the bad. Rhetorical criticism, this new imperative argued, should be a truly critical criticism — it should act as a check on the powerful by revealing and condemning the unethical discursive practices of the powerful. Literary criticism and aesthetic criticism — despite the presence in those fields of critical methodologies such as feminism, post-colonialism, postmodernism, and queer theory — lacks this universal mandate to praise the good and condemn the bad.

Thus, what results from such a discussion is that as a rhetorical critic, I have to say that OFWGKTA’s texts are irresponsible, even downright reprehensible, because of their potential real world impact: not all listeners will be mature and/or educated enough to feel a pang of resistance when he calls gays “faggots” or giddily describes raping then killing a girl named Raquel. But as a music critic and rap fan, it’s hard for me not to praise OFWGKTA and treasure their contribution to the genre. The practice of meta-criticism in this essay offers an explanation for my ethical bind: those who would condemn the object under discussion assume a rhetorical approach, and those who would praise it assume an aesthetic one, and like many people, I suspect, I assume both and neither from one moment to the next.

Constructions of the individual and the social in Kanye West’s creation myth, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

A close textual criticism of Kanye West’s universally-acclaimed 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (MBDTF) reveals the frequent use of enactment (Campbell and Jamieson 1978) as a literary-rhetorical strategy in the work. That is, West himself serves as evidence for the work’s central argument: that the “beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy” of the postmodern American man is to transcend his socio-political context — his historical moment^*. Being that the medium here is music, enactment occurs at the level of non-linguistic rhetoric as well, in the instrumentation and production choices. I will argue that his graceful use of enactment, as well as, crucially, synecdoche — in which Kanye himself serves as the prototypical every-man — is significant enough that it ought to receive more critical attention.

The simplest place to start is at the beginning, with the opening moments of track one, “Dark Fantasy”, in which guest star Nicki Minaj reads the following introduction in her best British accent (which isn’t very good, but as is typical of Minaj, it’s goofy as fuck), amid swirling synths, distorted strings, and auto-tuned choir voices:

You might think you’ve peeped the scene
You haven’t; the real one’s far too mean
The watered down one — the one you know
Was made up centuries ago
They made it sound all whack and corny
Yes, it’s awful, blasted boring
Twisted fiction, sick addiction
Well gather ‘round children; zip it, listen:

These eight lines frame MBDTF as a creation myth for the contemporary moment. “The watered-down one — the one you know / was made up centuries ago” is an obvious allusion to Genesis, or perhaps any creation tale the listener has experienced, be it Judeo-Christian-Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other. Those myths are criticized here for being “watered-down”, for having lost their relevance; they are mere “twisted fiction[s]” in the context of the contemporary moment, bygone anecdotes that we continue to recite out of habit, out of “sick addiction.” So MBDTF emerges as their replacement. Anyone familiar with West will find self-importance to this degree unsurprising. But insofar as he uses synecdoche and enactment to render himself the everyman, Kanye’s is a creation myth; it is an account of how the universe — specifically, his historical context — has created the Kanye-of-the-moment preserved on these recordings, and through these inclusive literary-rhetorical devices, the listener is created as well.

West communicates a tremendous amount of frustration here. His frustration is with just that universe that has birthed him; specifically, 1. the social and 2. the political realms.

From his well-publicized breakup with fiancée Alexis Phifer (which inspired the depressing but beautiful 808s and Heartbreak) to his embarrassing public snafus with (among others) President George W. Bush, Taylor Swift, and even SNL and South Park, West has handled his social life with far less grace than his art. But one of the main claims that MBDTF makes is that while these public antics may have suggested a lack of adequate self-reflection and self-awareness on West’s part, he has come to agree with his critics with regard to his character flaws. The best piece of evidence for this claim is the album’s best song, “Runaway”, whose memorable chorus proclaims: “Let’s have a toast for the douchebags / Let’s have a toast for the assholes / Let’s have a toast for the scumbags / Every one of ‘em that I know / Let’s have a toast for the jerkoffs / That’ll never take work off / Baby I got a plan / Run away fast as you can.” The first thing to note is the use of taboos: “douchebags”, “assholes”, and “jerkoffs”; these terms, somewhat jarring upon first listen because the melody they sing is so gorgeous, demonstrate Kanye’s hostility toward social norms, and toward the social in general. Meanwhile, the starkly minimalist instrumental, which mingles piano clinks, synth-bass rumbles, drum sample knocks, and pitch-perfect background vocals, represents the beautiful social world which Kanye’s individual terrorizes.  At the same time, the song argues that he is listening to the things people say about him; he knows that he is in the world’s view an “asshole”, and he’s willing to concur. As a result, his advice to anyone who would attempt to get close to him, to form a social bond with him, is to “run away fast as you can.” “Runaway” is an attempt by West, as individual, to break up with the social; I’m incapable of pleasing you, he confesses, and more importantly, I don’t deserve you. The impossibility of such a break up, combined with the intensity of Kanye’s yearning for it, is what makes MBDTF a tragedy.

This theme of social illiteracy and rejection echoes throughout “Blame Game”, “All of the Lights”, “Hell of a Life”, and “Devil in a New Dress” as well. “Blame Game” strengthens the argument of “Runaway”; like “Runaway”, it juxtaposes social pulchritude with individual filth. The instrumental, which samples one of Aphex Twin’s most beautiful compositions, “Avril 14th”, is embroidered with a hook from neo-soul crooner John Legend at his most achingly ethereal. Again, surrounded by this beauty Kanye suicide bombs his former lovers in an act of violent retribution for their taking away any chance of him feeling human connection. Chris Rock ends the track with an equally distasteful (but hilarious) sketch. The same basic enactment occurs in the juxtaposition of the linguistic and the non-linguistic on track eight, “Devil in a New Dress”: Kanye’s lovelife is at its falsest (“You love me for me? Could you be more phony?”) when the beat is at its prettiest and its most soulful.

In documenting his political universe, West employs synecdoche as his dominant trope. The best example of this is track two, “Gorgeous.” Here West drops some of the best political criticism of his career, bringing white privilege and power structures into focus with a precision and concision all but nonexistent in mainstream hip-hop — better yet, mainstream public discourse — in 2010. Verse one:

Penitentiary chances. The Devil dances
And eventually answers to the call of Autumn
All of them fallin’ for the love of ballin’
Get caught with 30 rocks, that cop look like Alec Baldwin
Inter-century anthems based off inner-city tantrums
Based off the way we was branded
Face it, Jerome get more time than Brandon
And at the airport they check all through my bags
And tell me that it’s random.

The last two lines, in particular, feel like a clarion call issuing forth from the mouths of every non-white individual groped, detained illegally, or simply slaughtered by the armies of the white and powerful since 2001. This is synecdoche at its most earnest. West himself may not have gone through any of this: “all of them fallin’ for the love of ballin’”, “caught with 30 rocks”, “Jerome get more time than Brandon”; but he’s speaking as, standing in for, the oppressed. In verse two, West asks:

Is hip hop just a euphemism for a new religion?
The soul music of the slaves that the youth is missing?
But this is more than just my road to redemption
Malcolm West had the whole nation standing at attention
As long as I’m in polos smiling, they think they got me
But they a try to crack me if they ever see a black me
I thought I chose a field where they couldn’t sack me
If a nigga ain’t shootin a jump shot, running a track meet

The line “Malcolm West had the whole nation standing at attention” is the baldest case of synecdoche in this verse, but really, what West is doing rhetorically is, as in the first verse, standing in for all oppressed people everywhere, specifically oppressed blacks. This is a synecdochal choice. His aim is to shine light on blacks’ oppression, to be their voice. He argues that the political universe has been nothing but cruel to blacks (even if they have managed to transcend it in various ways); this argument echoes throughout “So Appalled”, as well as, of course, Gil Scott-Heron-sampling album closer “Who Will Survive in America?” As in the songs that deal with his social life, Kanye’s discourse about political life demonstrates that he is socially conscious, even if he’s socially inept (and as a minority, socially powerless).

And so, what I view as the most remarkable move in the overarching argument is how he ties together these two threads: the rottenness of his social life and the rottenness of political life for the oppressed. To uncover the point of connection, we must return to opening track “Dark Fantasy”, and the notion of MBDTF in general as a creation myth. This notion is reified at various loci in the track, such as, “hey, teacher-teacher / Tell me, how do you respond to students? / And refresh the page and restart the memory? / Re-spark the soul and rebuild the energy?” He is arguing for the need for a new creation story, a new meta-text. This new meta-text is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy itself, because it enacts in a truer way than existing meta-texts such as the Bible, the Qu’ran, or the Bhagavad Gita (while borrowing descriptions from each) the actual relationship between the individual and the social, which MBDTF argues is the heart of human existence. In the closing bars of the track, which he sings together with guest Justin Vernon, ‘Ye alludes to his own attitude toward the reality he is chronicling:

At the mall, there was a seance
Just kids, no parents
Then the sky filled with herons
And I saw the devil in a Chrysler LeBaron
And the hell it wouldn’t spare us
And the fires did declare us
But after that, took pills, kissed an heiress
And woke up back in Paris

Lines like “just kids, no parents” and “saw the Devil in a Chrysler LeBaron” suggest that a discarding of the old in favor of the new is necessary in light of our new understanding of the world. Furthermore, an all-consuming fire (“the fires did declare us”) is needed to sanitize the world of the corrupting influence of the old. But what’s more, he seems to be saying that the only true answer to the individual’s precarious relationship with his socio-political context is suicide. Killing himself — “[taking] pills, [kissing] an heiress” — offers the promise of rebirth (“woke up back in Paris”), and perhaps he’ll be reborn as someone more socially capable, less “Lost in the World.”

“Lost in the World” and “Power”, respectively, are the thesis songs of MBDTF, and both seem to offer death as the most tantalizing answer to West’s — and synecdochally, our — underlying problem. The former track plays out as a dialogue between West’s own individual/social duality:

You’re my devil, you’re my angel
You’re my Heaven, you’re my Hell
You’re my now, you’re my forever
You’re my freedom, you’re my jail
You’re my lies, you’re my truth
You’re my war, you’re my truce
You’re my questions, you’re my proof
You’re my stress and you’re my masseuse

The language here displays an awareness that he cannot lose one without the other, that they’re inextricably bound up together. But for him, again, the only possibility of relief from their constant tension is death:

Mama-say, mama-sa, mama-makusa
Lost in this plastic life
Let’s break out of this fake ass party
Turn this in to a classic night
If we die in each other’s arms, still get laid in that afterlife
If we die in each other’s arms, still get laid

It’s a chance that he demonstrates an alarming willingness to take, and this becomes even more apparent on the album’s most iconic track, “Power”, whose chorus declares: “No one man should have all that power / The clock’s tickin’; I just count the hours / Stop trippin’; I’m trippin’ off the power / ‘Til then, fuck that; the world’s ours.” West knows that it’s only a matter of time before his inner turmoil collapses in upon itself, but “’til then, fuck that; the world’s ours.”

This seems to be the attitude of the track as it moves along: revelry in self-inflicted social misery. That is, until the listener arrives at the coda, and West’s truth is bluntly revealed: “Now this’ll be a beautiful death / Jumpin’ out the window. Letting everything go. Letting everything go. / You got the power to let power go?”, he asks. And this is MBDTF‘s fundamental question, the question that reflects back on Kanye, on your soundsystem, on my swiftly moving fingertips. Isn’t the distinction between the individual and the social landscape that surrounds him a false one, one he invented for himself (although perhaps without realizing it)? Isn’t it exactly what we need to cleanse ourselves of, what we inherited from “the watered-down one, the one [we] know”? Kanye’s desire for death is only as a means, not as an end — a means toward dissolving his ego. What the individual comes to realize is that his “beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy” of triumph over the social is an impossibility, because he’s only fighting against the Self.

The phoenix is the central visual metaphor of Runaway (West, 2010), a metaphor for the unbridled Self.

^*I have intentionally used gendered language here, because, as should be apparent to any informed listener, Kanye’s is clearly a masculine Fantasy. His rhetoric, like that of most mainstream rappers, tends to reify hetero-normative ideologies. This is why throughout my analysis I use masculine pronouns — I am only seeking to capture the complexities and imperfections of my object.