Hunter requests a post on the new Girl Talk album Feed the Animals, and in typical fashion I respond after a delay of a couple months. He comments that:
politically, i obviously sympathize with the anti-intellectual-property idea. but i also am a skeptic of the desirability of white people appropriating black voices for themselves. it’s sort of like in south park, where matt and trey make the black man say the hate crime laws are bad so that it seems less racist.
And then goes on to say that he enjoys the aesthetics of it, regardless of how you come down on the politics of the phenomenon.
In general, I’d have to agree. I feel supremely unqualified to render any kind of “serious” judgment on hip-hop questions. I simply am not familiar enough with the history, with the possible layers of meaning that completely pass me by, and with the way an artist might be playing subtly with the general tropes of the genre.
I do have to wonder if part of the reason Girl Talk is so big is because of how omnipresent all these samples are in the mind of any white, suburban child of the 80s or 90s. It’s all here: synths, Sting, “Steal My Sunshine,” “body movin'” and so on. This is stuff deeply embedded in my subconscious. And as such it couldn’t help but worm its way into my heart.
I think there’s really three different things at work. First, lots of people (I’m one of them) like hip-hop in the abstract but tend to shy away from really digging into the genre. We want stuff that’s immediately appealing. It’s a dilettante’s desire, and Girl Talk fulfills that role admirably. Even more than, say Kanye or Outkast, this is hip hop for your sweet tooth.
Second, by sampling so liberally from the tracks of our childhood he recuperates them in a way that we never really knew we were seeking. On listening, you are constantly incited to relive memories of childhood when these songs were your whole world. But unlike the sense of embarrasment such thoughts usually produce, you are free to admit that (deep down) you still love all of these hooks from the horrible pop songs of your youth. Which is not to say that you want to actually go out and listen to the full track. Instead, this lets you satisfy your guilty pleasure with permission from an artist who transcends cool. In a way, it’s the mirror image of the first effect. This is hip hop tempered by the warmth of deeply remembered melodies, and it is also bad pop music reclaimed and made cool once again.
The end result is something that is boisterous, fun, lively, and easy to digest, but which is also feels immediate. It’s all the pleasure of listening to an “oldies” station without the feeling of being left behind by your own culture. That one song can move from “96 Tears” to “Since U Been Gone” to MC Hammer to “Jessie’s Girl” and countless others imbues it with a transcendent hue.
And yet…something about it all doesn’t quite sit right with me. It’s not the politics – at least not in any explicit way. While I can see Hunter’s concern about appropriation, I don’t see it as malignant in this instance. And I’m too firmly convinced of both the inevitability and the positive effects of cultural hybridization to feel much fear in this area. Vigilance is important, but at its core I see the melding of musical styles as a good to be encouraged. Rock and roll itself as it exploded on the American scene in the 50s was nothing but the appropriation of black culture with a white face.
If Girl Talk is a continuation of that phenomenon, I think it is in a positive way. In a sense, it is here that the process reaches its true Moebius point, where the recursion becomes endless. Nirvana, Underworld, Justin Timberlake, Soulja Boy, and Dre…all of these are subsumed within a larger whole.
And the ease with which this is done is the real genius here. What could end up as an utter trainwreck instead stays light and fresh. No single genre ever establishes even a moment of prominence – sounds, techniques, styles, and all meaning bleeds from moment to moment. There is a brilliance here, an absolute artistic triumph. Every second feels new and unique, no matter how many times you listen. The way the disparate elements are tied together is unendingly impressive.
And yet, this – I think – is also where it fails for me. As much as I enjoy this record (a lot, actually) it achieves no resonance with me. The lightning fast shifts, the hyperactivity, the fact that no theme last more than 15 or 20 seconds…
All of this leaves me bewildered. And as much as I enjoy the sound, music to me has to be about substance. I don’t need it to have meaning in any kind of teleological sense. But I do need to feel like there is a depth there from which I can extract my own meaning. Or a canvas upon which my own response can be laid.
Here, though, the only thing I feel is a sense of claustrophia. The walls are closing in and the flashing lights, the endless movement…it starts to overwhelm.
The sheer artistry necessary to create this record is stunning. And I love the way it sounds. But the underlying aesthetic: the endless propulsion of cultural and musical referents detached from their context leaves me feeling just a tad uneasy. It reminds me of a George Santayana quote I’ve referenced before regarding Quentin Tarantino: “American’s love junk; it’s not the junk that bothers me, it’s the love.” I get that feeling here, too.
None of that means this isn’t a great, great album. It is, one of the best of the year. But at least for me, the inherent limitations of this style impose a ceiling on my appreciation. The best music to me always will be that which can make my heart skip a beat. That emotional core is surgically removed by Girl Talk, not on accident, but as the explicit purpose. The result is something very tasty, but ultimately it’s just empty calories. Nothing wrong with that per se but it does leave you a bit unfulfilled.
Give Me A Beat – Girl Talk