I find it easiest to write to a personal soundtrack. As I write this, I’m playing Nothing Was the Same, rapper Drake’s latest album from September that was nominated for best rap album at the Grammy’s this past Sunday. I love Drake, and I especially loved Nothing Was the Same, because it was innovative, compassionate, complex and it just sounds sooo good. 

But enough about Drake, I’ll embarrass myself. The other nominees for Best Rap Album are mostly established, successful rappers, e.g. Kanye West (Yeezus), Jay-Z (Magna Carter Holy Grail), Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (The Heist) and new kid on the block, Kendrick Lamar (good kid, m.A.A.d city). The competition here, for those of us partial to rap and hip hop, was stiff as a board (mostly). Yeezus, Magna Carta, and NWTS were ambitious endeavors by the (commercial) creme of the rap industry crop, good kid, m.A.A.d city was a breakout album that blew a lot of people (myself included) away. The Heist was an album of party music and appropriation, amidst four albums that tackled a variety of socioeconomic issues the black community grapple with daily in a discriminatory racialized world (but let’s just focus on North America right now.)

Guess which album won that night?

If you watched the Grammy’s or googled the results (as I did, come on now), you’d know. If you didn’t, I’ll give you three white privileged, gentrifying and overall underwhelming guesses.

“But wait!” “Macklemore is cool!” “He wrote ‘Same Love!'” “He married people, I saw!”

Sure he did, and in doing so took his little privileged behind another peg up on my problematic-o-meter. Macklemore (and the mute Ryan Lewis?) is a straight white man interjecting himself not only in a music industry that was born out of little socioeconomic wiggle room and a desire for an outlet with which to deal with this inflexibility, but also the lives of queer couples, is so weird and problematic and frankly pretty stupid. Why should Macklemore be rewarded for occupying the same socioeconomic space hundreds of young men and women are striving and struggling to achieve, when his music has no struggle to speak for? Yes, he’s independent and that’s great in its own right, but not when he is simultaneously silencing the artistic and social ventures of marginalized people.

He actually has a song called “White Privilege” and details how his success may come at the expense of others, and doesn’t see how this Grammy win (of FOUR) would ruffle a few feathers?

In the archives, Carter would likely call this, the situation of Macklemore at the Grammy’s, as an example of unintentional silences and domination of the marginalized voice by the voice in social power. Rap music is characterized by its calling attention to the injustices faced by the rapper, how that rapper acts against them, and makes use of consumptive lyrics to express all the great things that come with financial stability and success. A running theme in Yeezus is West’s explicit discontent with the way media and the music industry mechanism is not on his side, or on the side of black artists like him (see “New Slaves,” “I Am a God, “Black Skinhead”). Magna Carta extrapolates on how hard Jay-Z has worked to get where he is, and he is very, very successful. Both Drake and Lamar, young as they are, rap about where they are versus where they were, and what they hope to achieve in a horribly classist, racist and money-orientated society, among other personal problems.

In short, these albums are an archive of the rapper, of his success, contempt, turmoil, etc. These are drawn in most cases from personal experiences, a musical means of giving voice to their communities that are not as lucky as them. Rap music archives, one could argue, the problems mainstream white America is refusing to acknowledge.

But they do acknowledge Macklemore. “Same Love” is such a stupid, self-indulgent song. It does not help in the agency of queer people, it does not further the career of a queer artist, it does not make money for the queer community. “Same Love” is a song for allies. Queer people do not actually reap any immediate benefits from it if they don’t like the song, and don’t believe Macklemore is helping them.

(He isn’t.)

“White Privilege” is a song for who? What does a song like “Thrift Shop” do for racial equality or economic equity? How does an album that stays clear of sociopolitical claims beat out the fervent musings of his competitors? How does he get away with winning not one, but FOUR Grammy’s as the only white guy in his categories?

I sure don’t know, but check out here and here if you felt like I was relying on my bias (which admittedly I partially did).

Hello again everyone! New year, new blog, new identity, right? Did anyone make resolutions? I don’t usually, but I made one for this year, and granted it’s a bit precious and seemingly simple: I resolved to never go near the application Vine ever again. This sounds simplistic and a bit lame, but I am sure now that Vine is going to set society (the society privileged enough to have access to Vine, that is) back at least a couple decades.

Vine, that hip 6-second video app, has been around for less than 2 years but has already proved itself a relevant medium for social interaction, hierarchy and popular culture tastes: just today my friend referenced a Vine satirizing Beyoncé Knowles new song “Drunk in Love.” Many young celebrities popular on Twitter and Instagram have also taken up “Vining” their day to day lives, or, as my Art Studies class has come to understand it, archiving.

Vine is an archive! Vine is an enormous collection of personal videos, comedy shorts, visual stimulation, the list goes on. I myself had a Vine in early 2012, before the application had any real clout in the social media world. The only way to find a video was through the user’s profile or organizational tags. In short, everyone’s video archive was their own to construct and share with the world. But within the year vine added the ability to add others’ video to one’s profile, and so the popularity contests began. Almost all of the most well-known and followed Vine users are amateur comedians, and their humor has shaped the way new users seek popularity. Where this becomes problematic is the way certain archives compromise, or to borrow a term from Rodney G.S. Carter, “silence” the voices and contributions of others.

The two most popular Viners are both male, the first being KingBach, the second Nash Grier. Both have well over a million followers, and have considerable clout on other platforms (both have Youtube channels and twitters, link attached). Their humor now plays to an audience of millions. But what are they saying? What is it about their videos that stick, that get circulated around the world and on a large scale, the most valuable “fonds” in the archive of Vine as a whole. These collections reflect how we as a society decide and define the ‘funny,” the “popular,” the “now.”

The thing is, a lot of these famous people have really awful senses of humor. KingBach’s videos constantly utilize racist and sexist tropes, especially when it comes to objectifying women and featuring racist caricatures of minorities. Nash Grier recently migrated to Youtube, and one of his first videos was focused on his personal and generalized expectations for girls when wishing to gain the attention and approval of boys and men.

They are both utterly nauseating and indefinitely powerful.

Within the world of Vine, which has been gaining ground in the social media sphere for more than a year now, these are elite and respected comedians. Their self-editing and refinement (what they intend to show and not show of themselves to the public) is accepted as an example for what Vine represents to its entire community. These are the voices dictating others, shaping the culture of Vine humor and taste. When these kinds of opinions become a standard, what is preventing other forms of entertainment from being seen and heard. The trivialization of social issues not only inhibits their progress, it now cops cultural identity as commodity, as a joke, as something to be examined not for its judicial values, but for what is going to be a hit.

So, I really dislike Vine. Its original intent has been totally skewed and it no longer serves as an individual archive, but a reflection of the hybridity of personal and social taste. This would not be such an issue if social taste, at least as far as Vine was concerned, was not dictated by misogyny and racial elitism. If you don’t make any of those jokes in person, there’s no reason they should find an audience on the internet.