The Bad Guy
April 15th, 2008
Via Westword, Max Karson has tried his hand at rap again. It’s bad. Really, really derivatively bad in all the ways that Eminem is really, really derivatively bad: it’s nauseously self-pitying and absolutely fucking idiotic when trying on serious subject matter. (“Keep your dick in your pants and you won’t get diseased.”)
I want to defend Mr. Karson, but this makes it more difficult. Not because the subject matter is offensive, it’s no more offensive than any number of corny super-gangsta rap albums, but because of the limited imaginative scope of the project. My advice to Mr. Karson: read Britton, read Burroughs, read Mirbau, read Bataille, read Krassner, read Genet, read Ballard, read P-Orridge, read Melville, read Thoreau, read Crews, read the Marquis de Sade, fuck, read Eldridge Cleaver, and for Christ’s sake, read Churchill. Not because there’s much you need to take from them, but because you need to know where the edge of the envelope actually is.
I am a dilettantish believer in transgressive literature — and yes, I know, many of those listed don’t fall comfortably in the designation, nor should they — but one must actually transgress. Playing on the now hokey tropes of nineties rap is neither interesting nor challenging. Yeah, it’ll piss off academic middle management suits, but fuck academic middle management suits. One might as well take it upon one’s self to anger chipmunks. Don’t irritate them, soak them in gasoline and burn them in the street.
I love the idea of a school shooting rap from a college student, but I need more than the same shit that’s been rerun on CNN since the Virginia Tech shootings rephrased in the now-cliched terminology of urban hipster understanding. Give me why, to quote Breton, “the simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.” Or, if not that, make me understand why flickering fluorescent lights might demand the same.
(There are some funny lines. For all my criticism, I’ll take this over Eminem any day.)
April 16th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
He says his lawyer’s especially pissed at him at the moment.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Eminem won the Source Awards Best Rapper twice. They must be Uncle Toms.
Class assignment: Name a white rapper you like, and explain why.
Grant “Vanilla Sherbet” Crowellicious
April 16th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
What the hell have you done to my computer, Benjamin?? It defaults the last name of the post. Curse you and your evil programming!
April 16th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Only one? Eminem is, in fact, enormously overrated. For a while I thought it was just because he’s white, but then I started actually listening to hip-hop (or, more to the point, seeing pictures of artists). I suppose you have to explain him just like you would explain boy bands, or the Simpson sisters.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
It’s a bug, Mr. Crowell, happens to everyone. My apologies, if I wasn’t so lazy I’d fix it.
To be honest, I don’t like any rap much. I’m not joking when I say that most of what I listen to is Country and Western. Eminem can be quite funny, but the whiny shit gets on my nerves.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
some transgressive visual art
April 17th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Thank you mightily, Yalie. Made my evening.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:01 am
“I am a dilettantish believer in transgressive literature”.
Dilettante? What else interests you? The artists of all your recommendations are women hating, suicidal, mentally ill and addicted failures. What about multiply intentional pregancies ending in induced miscarriages pleased you?
April 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am
In the last, say, two weeks, I’ve read (or am reading) novels by Philip Roth, Ian McEwan, Larry Brown and Orson Scott Card (which, I’m afraid, reified my distaste for science fiction). I’m also reading Edmund Morris’ unabridged first biography of T. Roosevelt and T. Roosevelt’s autobiography. Which of those is transgressive literature? Or are you just extrapolating that to mean anything slightly less pinch-mouthed than yourself?
April 18th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Fuck Ian McEwan, by the way. Just in case anybody’s ever tempted to suffer through one of his insipid hyper-bourgeois concoctions.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
No worries on the bug, Benjamin. Perhaps it will make myself and others take a little pause before we’re overcome with the urge to shoot something off without reading it.
Rap is like country, in my opinion, 95% unpleasant, and 5% great. I’ve read several accounts in Rolling Stone and Spin and Blender of well-known rappers listening to country musicians to be inspired with their own lyrics. So your country may be all P Diddy-fied.
Now you know what Friday is.. Movie Night.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=t8vKqxbxOLE
Special guest appearance by… who else. Back when I was auditioning for the job of a young Orson Well (who ate Santa Claus).
April 18th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Ender’s Game? I think it has to be read in the sixth grade for real effect. That being said, it’s an excellent children’s book, and the cultural metaphor is thoroughly compelling at that age if you ask me.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Tyndale: Yep, Ender’s Game. Was actually trying to be less elitist. Found it on a list of the best sci-fi novels of all time, and checked it out of the library. Not a mistake I’ll be making again anytime soon.
Grant: I’m with you on the percentages on country music. Most of what I like’s a little older. And, thanks for the video, that was fucking funny. I’ve said it before, and I meant it then, if you’re ever in town, I’ll buy you a beer.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
You may well read other things but you only post about transgressive literature. That tells your story. You failed to answer my question: What about multiple intentional pregancies ending in induced miscarriages pleased you?
April 19th, 2008 at 8:15 am
he just said that Larry Brown is not transgressive, and would fall under a different category of literature. On his blog category thing below he has brown listed, hence, he posts about writers additional to and above the transgressive ones. So, maybe you’re trying to get at something else, and should rephrase the question.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Thank you, Benjamin. I will take you up on that. Probably when I give away all of my Ward Churchill footage to the CU Film School. (Maybe in return they’ll pay for my travel expenses.)
Boulder and Denver do have very good beer.