Money doesn’t buy talent, and sure doesn’t buy culture, but it does buy expensive instruments and production equipment. More often than not it also buys industry recognition and other privileges above others that don’t have the same means, but that’s besides the point.
His entire career is built upon the appropriation of black culture; he started on the hip-hop scene. Only to take what he gained from that, strip black people and as much of their culture out of it as he could without making himself irrelevant, and use the resulting “rap rock” sound to pander to a broader more racist audience that would then cheer as he performed underneath white supremacist hate symbols. Once his fame was secured he would cleanse rap out of his sound entirely, and revert to country rock
He’s a cynical and talentless hack that formulated his music not as a tool of cultural or self expression, not for the sake of doing anything new, but for the purpose of self enrichment. To have the broadest appeal to an audience that wanted black cultural touchstones without black people involved in it, and would have rejected it if it were a black man in his place. He uses the spoils of his theft to support policies and politicians that are directly harmful to the people of the culture that he got his start from, and the city he takes credit for as a claim to fame. None of this points to him having any appreciation for music at all, other than as a scheme to become rich and famous.
So yeah, it’s no wonder his music has broad appeal within a certain audience, it wasn’t made for any purpose other than that. That doesn’t make it good. It’s a lifeless, blanched corpse of the culture he owes his career to.
That is what it has to do with music. Like it or not, all of these things are interconnected. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Music is culture is status is politics is history and so on.
causepix@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Money doesn’t buy talent, and sure doesn’t buy culture, but it does buy expensive instruments and production equipment. More often than not it also buys industry recognition and other privileges above others that don’t have the same means, but that’s besides the point.
His entire career is built upon the appropriation of black culture; he started on the hip-hop scene. Only to take what he gained from that, strip black people and as much of their culture out of it as he could without making himself irrelevant, and use the resulting “rap rock” sound to pander to a broader more racist audience that would then cheer as he performed underneath white supremacist hate symbols. Once his fame was secured he would cleanse rap out of his sound entirely, and revert to country rock
He’s a cynical and talentless hack that formulated his music not as a tool of cultural or self expression, not for the sake of doing anything new, but for the purpose of self enrichment. To have the broadest appeal to an audience that wanted black cultural touchstones without black people involved in it, and would have rejected it if it were a black man in his place. He uses the spoils of his theft to support policies and politicians that are directly harmful to the people of the culture that he got his start from, and the city he takes credit for as a claim to fame. None of this points to him having any appreciation for music at all, other than as a scheme to become rich and famous.
So yeah, it’s no wonder his music has broad appeal within a certain audience, it wasn’t made for any purpose other than that. That doesn’t make it good. It’s a lifeless, blanched corpse of the culture he owes his career to.
That is what it has to do with music. Like it or not, all of these things are interconnected. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Music is culture is status is politics is history and so on.
BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
yeah but he made cowboy so really how can you fault him for any of that