Basically a day after (the clean version) leaked, the internet went collectively nuts. At this point, there wasn’t too much coherent discourse (aside from Rolling Stone‘s 5-star review, and who is really checking for RS when it comes to rap anyway?), and really it was way too fresh for that. Noz, an old-guard rap blogger, threw up his cautious take (singular themes, forward-thinking production) via the new analytic blogging: a chat. But the earliest, most telling review was from new New York mag wordsmith Nitsuh Abebe, who compared old day opulence with modern day filth and related MBDTF (you could call it a mix of high-low) to that. Also early, but worth checking, are these track-by-track ultra-referencey/contextual notes from Himanshu Suri of Das Racist who ends up giving the album 9 out of 10 mangoes.

There were other reviews, but the one that got people either heated/smarmy was Pitchfork.com’s rarified 10.0 rating. Ryan Dombal spends the first half of the piece irritatingly on this Michael Jackson/Kanye West tangent instead of talking about why the original indie-cred website deigned to give Yeezy a perfect score (only ever really handed out to reissues), eventually discussing the rapper’s ability to tackle new territory for both rap and himself. By far, Sean Fennessey of the Village Voice, has written some of the most apt, compelling, straight up fucking beautiful stuff with regards to the album. His review, which includes a hilarious but no-for-real Kevin McCallister analogy, talks about Kanye’s grasp on fantasy and self-control.

Surprisingly, the negative opinions were scarce. Sure, a lot of people had previous grievances with Kanye related to his ego/Taylor-gate, but most were willing to concede to the extravagance of this record. The Guardian, which has a surprisingly interesting music blog, addressed this in a piece called “Kanye West’s fantasy has come true — the critics believe the hype.” It’s an interesting read, taking issue with qwerty-happy critics moreso than Kanye himself, but the flaw is in the title: most critics have always believed the hype. Tom Ewing, who also writes for The Guardian and Pitchfork (but didn’t write either piece cited above), posted up his coles notes on Tumblr (the last bastion of honest music chronicling?) coming to an non-definitive conclusion, but making some good points including why, maybe, 808s & Heartbreaks captures vulnerability better and art v. commerce as it relates to Kanye and Lady Gaga. To that last point, Matthew Perpetua, another music critic asked an interesting question: are we giving Kanye, an artist working in relatively resistant genre, too much credit for pushing boundaries when other artists do it all the time?

The Kanye media assault also prompted some great alternative discourses. Our pal Sam Han tackled that other bit of Kanye-controversy, unrelated to the album’s release, on Suri’s blog : George Bush’s hurt feelings. Sam game-changed the popular train of thought with this sentence, “To demand an admission of racism does not do much in the United States today.”  And this morning, in response to a new U.S. state security pat-down policy, Tavia Nyong’o did a side-by-side comparing the “don’t touch my junk!” hysteria surrounding the policy and  rapper.

Surprisingly, the big picture stuff coming out hasn’t been too noteworthy. The exception is Noah Callahan-Bever’s Complex cover story detailing a trip to Hawaii during the album’s recording and featuring the most amazing block quotes from MBDTF contributors (esp. Nicki Minaj, Pusha T and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon).

Finally: today, Fennessey bested himself with a play-by-play of Yeezy’s inaugural MBDTF concert, which took place last night in NYC, a day after the album came out. Read it, if only for the Diddy anecdote. Then head over to Miss Info, who so-fucking-faithfully transcribed all of Kanye’s concert-closing rant for us, the collectively-going-nuts internet.

Before I finish, a sort-of apology, sort-of defense: yeah, Kanye’s record really excited me, it’s taken a lot out of me, and it’s been really hard for me to say all of the things  I want to say (which involve not just the record, but culture and race and socio-economics, etc). But more than that, I’ve been excited about this album because of all the great writing, thinking and idea-making it’s spawned in people I admire. Okay, so their work lets me cop out of formulating my response but, more importantly it’s inspired me in a way I haven’t felt in a really long time. So, a sorry, a defense, and a thank you.

Steven Spielberg, enthusiastic about the medium, said five years ago video games would be art once “somebody confesses that they cried at Level 17.” At the time, a friend of mine scoffed and said he already HAD shed tears while playing games. Granted, this particular friend crying at, well, anything, wasn’t much of a surprise, and catharsis as the benchmark for artistic expression is a particularly Spielberg-ian way of approaching the question, but the question itself remains. Those things. Video games. Art?

Movie critic Roger Ebert also threw his two cents into the coin slot in 2005, and in his mind the answer was a resounding “no”. Earlier this month he revisited the topic on his blog but his opinion hadn’t changed. Of course, many disagreed with him. In truth, it’s not a new debate, and as computer power grows exponentially and games become more and more mainstream, it’s a question that probably won’t be going away any time soon. So get your game face on (or some other such bad pun) and let’s see what the smart people are saying:

The Insider

Kellee Santiago from modestly named thatgamecompany gives a TED talk arguing that games already are art. She gives examples, including Flower, which looks kind of boring and is about nature and balance or something, and Waco, where users take on the persona of David Koresh. Say what? Say word, DAVID KORESH. She compares the relative crudeness and simplicity of current-day  games to the early days of cinema, and says as people grow to expect more and different things from the medium, possibilities will open up. But she also admits she is hella biased. Most artists are though, right? [TEDxUSC - Kelle Santiago - 3/23/09]

The Outsider

In a blog post brusquely titled “Video games can never be art”, Ebert attacks Santiago’s argument on a number of fronts. He ends up with a valid enough position: video games are games, and there’s nothing wrong with that really, so why can’t gamers just be happy with that? “One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.” See what he did there? In order for games to be art, they have to not be games. In either of which case, Ebert wins. Game over, yeah? ["Video games can never be art"]

The Objective Observer

Not really. Jon Evans writes a thorough piece for Maisonneuve that looks back at early text-based internet games (MUDs! Give a shout if you played MUDs), and draws a clear line to World of Warcraft, along the way detailing quite a few emotional moments in games, famous and obscure, that players say tugged their heartstrings. He doesn’t hold any punches though, noting that “for all Bio-Shock‘s visual beauty and apparent complexity, it is fundamentally the same game as Pac-Man.”  But he champions the character work and open-world design of Grand Theft Auto 4, calling it “the industry’s biggest step yet towards meaningful and original storytelling.” Though not moved to tears, he ends on an optimistic note. ["Can a video game make you cry?"]

The Author with Geek Cred

In the Wall Street Journal, author Junot Diaz counters the praise surrounding GTA IV, saying that sure, fine, it’s art, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good. “GTA IV sucks you the hell in but its narrative doesn’t move me in any way or shake me up or even piss me off,” he writes. “Successful art tears away the veil and allows you to see the world with lapidary clarity; successful art pulls you apart and puts you back together again…and in the process reminds you in a visceral way of your limitations, your vulnerabilities, makes you in effect more human. Does GTA IV do that? Not for me it doesn’t…” Which sounds like a good point, but I have no idea what “lapidary” means! ["Grand but no Godfather"]

The Pointlessness of Existence

So what can a game do to show our limitations and vulnerabilities? With Ebert’s paradox, it can’t, really. Which maybe explains why so many games with artistic slants skirt the win/lose theme altogether and lean towards existential themes — because what if beating the game means losing at everything else? What is the point of winning anything anyway? For a hands-on example, try Every Day The Same Dream, “a little art game about alienation and refusal of labour.” Or if you don’t like crying softly to yourself, go play God of War 3 and see how the trilogy ends. In that vein, sci-fi blog i09 runs down some of their favourite games that are likely to give you a bad case of ennui. :( ["Video games that plunge you into existential despair"]

The Video Game Writer That Could

Alright, so aside from lose/lose scenarios, what other narratives can video games explore? Part of what hampers game artistry is that historically the principle creative forces in the industry are designers concerned more with gameplay and graphics than they are with storytelling. Which is like when Puff Daddy had the Lox under his wing but all he wanted to do was put them in shiny gold suits and make them dance behind Mariah Carey. Mary De Marle, the acclaimed video game writer behind Myst III and Myst IV, pushes for more collaboration between writers and game designers at an industry conference (insider shit, right here), picturing the possibilities of together creating a new form of storytelling. Get your Power Point on: ["What's a Writer to Do? Re-defining Our Role in Crafting Player-Driven Narratives"]

The Critics

De Marle notes that the language of video game storytelling hasn’t even really been invented yet. On the flipside, neither has the language for video game criticism.  Sure, reviews run rampant, but while, say, film studies has developed its own modes of thinking about the medium specifically, video game discourse is still mostly a patchwork of thoughts cribbed from other art forms. For an early attempt at video game thinking, check out Salon.com co-founder Scott Rosenberg’s “A Portrait of Mario” from way-back 1991 (beware: Nietzsche quotes!). And for something more contemporary, there’s the academic-minded but pop-obsessed team at Popmatters, who recently wrapped up a series on the best storytelling in video games. ["Moving Pixels Podcast: The Best of Video Game Storytelling"]

The Rock Stars

For a really good non-fiction narrative read that also encapsulates the video game world’s tension between art and commerce, David Kushner presents “Masters of Doom”. The book follows the “Lennon and McCartney of video games” John Carmack and John Romero — the controversial guys behind pop culture phenomenons Doom and Quake — through incredible success and the inevitable destruction of their friendship as the impulses of money and art tear them apart. Kushner’s style is breezy and whether you’re into games or not it’s a fast-paced, engaging, addictive read. ["Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture"]

And there you have it. In no time at all, we’ll have actual video game snobs who think the rest of us don’t understand anything we play, and highbrow gamers who coyly list “guilty pleasures” in order to appear even more highbrow, and regular ass people who say stuff like “that game is SUPPOSED to be stupid, why can’t you just enjoy it?” Sounds like fun doesn’t it? I can’t wait!

“Word Up”: The linkdump series that feels like homework.

(images via and and also)

A year ago, Barack Obama became president of the United States. He also gave dap to the Savage Dragon, was saved by Spider-Man from an evil duplicate, personally chose the new Youngblood roster, answered the riddle of the sphinx, was outwitted on national television by the Bomb Queen, punched out a gang leader in post-apocalyptic Chicago, fought deadites from hell, and then made out with himself.

Here is Obama’s year in comic books:

“Barack Obama: The Road to the White House” & “The First 100 Days”

Let’s get the obligatory bio offerings out of the way. Publisher IDW is a licensing machine, having already done adaptations for CSI, Underworld, and Metal Gear Solid, so I guess it was natural for them to cash-grab the fuck out of the Obama craze. But even if they did for dollars, the result was incredibly overly-written, awkwardly drawn and overall painful. Look at this shit:

EXCITING. Now stop looking at it, before your eyes die.

RATING: “GAHH MY EYES” 0 BARRIES

“Savage Dragon” 137 & 145

The Savage Dragon, who had a mo-hawk when he was a human so of course grew a fin on his head when he mutated, once ran for office himself, so when the character threw his support behind Obama the endorsement actually meant something. Not to the real world, but to the world in the comic and to the Savage Dragon himself as a character. It had been 12 years since Dragon left the Chicago police force, and the comic works in real time so it really HAD been 12 freaking years. But in issue #45 Dragon reinstates himself, and his first assignment is a security detail for a home-visiting Obama. Maybe bringing the Dragon back to the fold with an Obama appearance was creator Erik Larsen’s way of saying he’d regained his faith in the establishment. Uniforms weren’t offensive anymore, they had meaning again. Maybe ordinary people with green skin and death biceps can affect change within the system. Maybe we’re going to be OK.

Or maybe we all fuck up and everything explodes in our faces.

“There’s only so much one man can do.” Obama should use this issue as a Power Point presentation during his state of the union speech.

RATING: “Stupid but fun and fits into the continuity!” 3 OUT OF 5 BARRIES!

“Amazing Spider-Man” #583

Obama’s inauguration is interrupted by a doppelganger and Spider-Man intervenes to determine who’s the real deal.  How? BASKETBALL TRIVIA. Remember when everyone was like, “Who is this “Obama” and what do we really know about him?” BASKETBALL. HE PLAYS BASKETBALL.

Now wait though — if it’s a question only Obama knows the answer to, how the fuck would you know who’s telling the truth? And if it’s a question YOU know the answer to, how would you expect the impostor NOT to?

Yeah, OK that works for me.

RATING: “Ridonkulous but why not?” 2 BARRIES

“Bomb Queen” volume 6, #1

This issue has one of the worst covers ever. “Bomb Queen” is a cheeky throwback to the 90s “bad girl” craze, which means half-naked, distorted female bodies. With attitude. Which is kinda like comics in general, but with nip slips. And while the whole thing is trashy and exploitative it is one of the rare Obama appearances that actually does something with him. When Obama tries to negotiate with super-villain despot Bomb Queen, it’s an exploration of the U.S. president’s staunch belief in dialogue and diplomacy. Does it work?

“As I just demonstrated, motherfucking words are meaningless.” Thank god, because otherwise words would be fucking my mother!

RATING: “Nice try but too bad Bomb Queen sucks!” 2 BARRIES

“Youngblood” volume 4, #8-9

FINALLY Obama isn’t just some dude behind a desk or giving a long-ass speech. No wait, he’s still behind a desk, but he’s choosing members for the elite government-sponsored superteam, Youngblood. It’s Obama as commander-in-chief, someone not afraid to flex his armed forces. It seemed like a reach back then, but two wars and a Nobel Peace Prize controversy later and yeah, OK.

In Rob Liefeld’s mind though, Obama isn’t just a potential hawk, he’s also a potential bigot.

Yo did he just call that android a “robot”??

By the way that image of Obama is repeated like a million times because ROB LIEFELD CAN’T DRAW. I know everyone knows this, but it can’t be said enough. But it does make for laughs later when Obama goes all Bruce Willis and Liefeld doesn’t have a photo to trace:

Check out that random black dude. With no eyes. Whose pants are also shoes.

RATING: “Bad, real bad, but Liefeld made me laugh!” 2 BARRIES

“Army of Darkness – Ash Saves Obama” #1-2 (will not read 3-4)

This comic is an asshole. Obama’s only drawn from the back, which is a complete waste of time. Even though the artist can clearly draw Obama, as he does when illustrating a picture of Obama, so why not draw the damn dude? Oh and then he’s not even IN issue #2. Is this supposed to mean something? Are you commenting on Obama’s cool and distanced demeanour? His celebrity status? I don’t care because it sucks.

Oh, shut up.

RATING: 1 IS THE LONELIEST BARRY

“Barack the Barbarian” #1-4

I feel bad trashing this book because I love writer Larry Hama for all he’s done on the page and behind the scenes for minorities in comics. With that legacy, an Obama riff on Conan the Barbarian should be something more than a couple of cheap jokes and puns but that’s all Hama has for us here. Characters are named “Hilaria” or “Boosh” or “Red Sarah” after their obvious real-life counterparts, and Obama visits sphinx statues that look like Letterman and Leno and whose riddles are talk-show questions. Monsters are called “snarks.” Get it?

One thing great though are the covers, ripe for deconstruction by cultural theory students:

This picture’s worth a couple thousand word essays. I would have loved it if the comic itself played with the signifiers of a strong black man with a sword who defeated a white woman to lead a country where he was branded an outsider. Instead we get this hot mess:

“Nyaaaa!” indeed.

RATING: “Hot on the outside!” 2 BARRIES

“Drafted: One Hundred Days”

The “Drafted” series is about aliens invading earth and conscripting us to fight in an inter-planetary war. “One Hundred Days” sticks Obama in this fictional universe, examing how his much-scrutinized first one hundred days in office would be different had the election never happened and Chicago blown the fuck up instead. He wouldn’t be in office, but would he still be a leader?

“One Hundred Days” is by far the most mature comic to feature Obama. It runs him through the ringer on a couple of issues that weighed on voters’ minds. Has no military experience? Let’s conscript him in the biggest war ever. All soaring rhetoric and no action? Let’s make him lose his voice. Elitist? Let’s blow up his hometown, kill his family and have him scrounge for canned goods. “One Hundred Days” goes further than rest, and seeing Obama deal with a frustrated population just trying to survive carries extra weight now as joblessness becomes his most pressing issue in the real world.

“One Hundred Days” doesn’t just play with the Obama’s caricature — overly calm, peaceful, BASKETBALL — it prods him as a real person and puts him in difficult situations. Even to the point where he loses his temper, something we haven’t seen yet in real life but feels right because the writing doesn’t suck.

RATING: “Look I’m a real comic character!” 4 OUT OF 5 BARRIES!

Miscellaneous

I also have to give it up to Laura Hudson of Comics Alliance who fills in some of my knowledge gaps in her own Obama run down. Apparently not only does he team up with Scooby-Doo, but he grows up adorable manga style, gets filthy in some manga porn (NSFW or SANItY!)  and kisses himself on the Internet.

Bake 'em away, toys.

The execution of the Beltway sniper in November triggered a few time-pegged stories about capital punishment — this, combined with some “Hey, let’s find out what’s going on in jail” stories that journalists are wont to pitch every now and again, led to an almost-meme that came and went quietly but that I think deserves a little more contemplation. And don’t worry, I left out all those stories about rappers taking the “T.I. and Vick vacation.”

Because you can’t expect much from anything called a ‘superjail’

Following one of the Star’s trademark social investigations, Diana Zlomisilic reports that B-Town’s Roy McMurty Youth Centre — a so-called “superjail” — isn’t the haven for youth rehabilitation it’s cracked out to be. Due to a grip of complaints, the centre was being investigated for excessive use of force and food deprivation. Although former chief justice Roy McMurty, for whom the centre was named, said the idea behind the facility was to “see youth as having a problem, not being one,” this apparently meant seeing youth as having hidden DVDs in their butts, as one particularly gruesome allegation says authorities cavity-searched youth in search of a missing disc. And don’t bother praying for better days — the centre’s touted multi-faith prayer room is out of service, too. [Superjail for youth raises troubling questions]

Crime and punishment and hipsters

Regularly pretty sharp, the Awl’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper pops up at The Daily Beast, where otherwise interesting writers often go to appear out-of-touch and/or humourless (is it the ughsly STOP sign-ish logo that does it?), to check in on the infamous hipster-grifter Kari Ferrel and see how she’s handling jail in Utah. For those who don’t know, Ferrell became infamous sorta for committing fraud and forgery and promising handjobs with her mouth and looking like a Suicide Girl. She’s maintaining, watching her carbs, masturbating, and reflecting on “the Orwelian nature of jail itself,” in case you too were wondering. [Catching Up With the Hipster Grifter]

Speaking of carbs…

Slate wonders if death row inmates really end up eating anything they want for their last meal (and you can make your own pun about just desserts, OK?). For the most part, as Christopher Beam discovers, prisoners can request pretty much whatever they want, but any dish is subject to budget concerns, local availability, and generally whether or not the on-site cook can muster it up with what they have on hand. Meaning fillet mignon often enters one ear and exits the other as hamburger. Also, the Unibomber had ice cream before his execution! [Can a prisoner request anything for his last meal?]

Between the rock and the hard place

In California, however — where the state animal is a grizzly bear and the governor is a hairless bear — death row has its upside. According to the Los Angeles Times, Cali’s slow appeals process and fastidiousness when faced with ending someone’s life has some convicts straight-up asking for the death penalty, knowing they’ll live long in limbo and the relative luxury of the row’s private, larger cells, television and telephone hookups (easier to call your lawyer), and “contact visit” privileges. Of course, no mention is made of just doing away with the penalty altogether. Eerily appropriate Google-generated ad? Check: “Electricity on the cheap? The amazing secret the electricity companies don’t want you to know!” (Cali is currently reviewing its flawed lethal injection procedures.) [Death penalty is considered a boon by some California inmates]

Closing the door on closure?

But of course, what about the victims? Naseem Rakha, author of the death penalty-themed The Crying Tree, tries to poke a hole in what she calls “perhaps the most emotionally compelling” argument in favour of capital punishment: the idea that execution provides closure for the families of victims. Rather than pouring so much money, time, pure bureuacracy and, she argues, false hope, into the death row system in the name of closure, she instead advocates for “counselors who will sit with, listen to and work with survivors; work environments flexible enough to accommodate counseling sessions and the down time that is a natural result of grief and stress; and victim assistance programs that make sure those things happen.” [Do executions bring closure?]

First-person narration

And while arguments and counter-arguments are necessary and valid, sometimes it’s best to just sit and quietly reflect on shit. Slate links to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s “Executed Offenders” page, where the last statements of death row inmates are kept for, I don’t know, Internet posterity I guess (among other legal and records-keeping obligations). They are whatever you make of them, but they certainly are something.

“Word Up”: the linkdump series that feels like homework.

I don’t know how it happened. At some point I went from thinking that socialites only existed in movies and New York City, to literally reading about Toronto “socialite” Ainsley Kerr every friggin time I check my email.

First it was this piece from Eye Weekly, which isn’t necessary to read because I can sum it up in a few sentences: A blogger who seems to write less for the purpose of writing and more for the purpose of stirring shit up so people will write about her, penned a catty dis to Kerr which caused a bit of a brawl on the comments board. I’m not even sure why the article was published in the first place, or why I linked to it above, because it’s seems to me like it’s a case of petty jealousy directed  from one wanna-be socialite who is a journalist towards one wanna-be journalist who is a socialite.

Then there was my Toro newsletter which always includes photo shoots of well known women (well, well known for Canadian standards). Who was that woman this time? None other than Kerr (one of the photos is above), in a rather uninspiring and sometimes awkward spread. Yes she is attractive, yes she is a socialite (as ridiculous as that title is), but I don’t think she is as worthy, talent wise, as some of Toro’s other female photo subjects.

Then literally just a few minutes ago I checked my twitter feed and clicked on a link from a new blog that I was beginning to respect and enjoy and guess who I saw? Yup, Kerr again. Now, at least this post seemed more to mock than to celebrate Kerr’s ability to be attractive and rich at the same time (not an easy task, it’s like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time), but the fact is, the more we write about it, the more we legitimize the whole idea that just because people come from money it’s enough to make us look up to them. Which actually brings me to this, where I ask you to forget everything I just wrote. And next time someone asks you if Toronto has any of it’s own socialites, just laugh and say “what? I thought they only existed in movies and New York City.”

Trust me, it’s better for us all.

Hip-hop's generation gap can be jarring

It’s the stuff of genres and yes, blueprints — changing vanguards, provocateur newcomers, torch passings, aged mentors and sniveling students. Cliches about the more things change, etc. Movies where wily old men defeat athletic teens with sheer know-how and decades worth of muscle memory. Honourable samurai versus heretic ninja. The good ol’ days when work meant something. The circle of life. The nostalgia, man.

So when a flurried succession of albums from established, 40-ish rappers came through the door waving flags and re-staking claims — Raekwon, KRS-One and Buckshot, Ghostface, Jay-Z, and Snoop to come — something was no doubt up. A clear line was appearing between the beasts of yore and the fashion-obsessed upstarts of today, and those who care about the culture (and a few who don’t) naturally got to thinking, what the fuck is going on here anyway? And why do my knees hurt so much when it rains?

Here’s what they had to say.

Snoop with the next generation

Coming of age

The BBC’s Alexis Akwagyiram profiles Joe Conzo, a South Bronx-bred hip-hop photographer who came up in rap’s Golden Age. The piece jumps from Conzo snapping pics of Latino bboys before the term ‘hip-hop’ was even coined, to Ivy-League Yale academics discussing the work of New York’s finest emcees. Whereas Conzo lived and breathed the culture, the students take part in tours that visit New York’s projects on field trips that add context to their studies. Is hip-hop’s growth one from first-person storytelling and genuine community to twice-removed cultural tourism? [Hip-hop comes of age]

As it lives and breathes

Blunted blogger Noz has a few things to say about that. In a piece for The Root, Noz points out that the BBC article regards hip-hop as some sort of artifact, already embalmed and hanging in a museum for never-downs to stare at and pontificate on. Noz calls for nuance — hip-hop is old and changed but alive and well, and while some rappers have aged gracefully others are just as shallow as before, merely bragging about maturity instead of actually reaching it. ['Grown Man' Rappers Like Jay-Z or Common Are Mature Only in the Absence of Immaturity]

Bigger than hip-hop

Jonah Weiner blogs on Slate‘s “Brow Beat” that maybe there are only two paths for aging rhymesayers: 1) become bigger than hip-hop and reach outwards to other genres ala Andre 3000 and Kanye West, or 2) stick with it and become entirely unconvincing ala Jay-Z. While artists in other forms of pop music have found ways to go grey in style, Weiner says rappers have yet to figure this out for themselves. [Growing Old and Going Broke in Hip-Hop]

The Jigga factor

Leave it to The New Yorker to say the least but say it the best. Sasha Frere-Jones muses on the death of hip-hop, but really he’s talking about the decline of Jay-Z, a distinction made clearer when he gives props to Raekwon and Indiana’s Freddie Gibbs. But damn if this isn’t a wonderful sentence: “Somewhere along the way, the struggle to escape became a love of accumulation, and underdogs ended up sounding as smug as the authorities they once battled.” [Wrapping Up]

But hip-hop’s autopsy isn’t admissible to a jury of stalwarts like Toure. No sir:

Generation next

Meanwhile, back at The Root, Jeff Chang sounds a little bored with the whole debate. The academic-minded writer (apologies, Jeff, it wasn’t a diss tweet, just a real tweet!) who once noted that generations are fictions, sees the discussion as the same old same. “Every time the ex-kids who feel like they reinvented it get a little older, the new kids behind them start turning it into something else. How do the older ones react? They holler about ‘Hip-hop is dead’—the first time someone said hip-hop was dead was in 1979, the year ‘Rapper’s Delight’ came out.” And that’s word to your son’s grandma. [The Small, Hot Argument Across Hip-Hop's Mini-Generation Gap]

Or, as Ego Trip’s Ted Bawno might tweet it:

Caught feelings

So maybe that’s all it is — we’ve caught feelings. Not over the culture as a whole, as we might have claimed in our KRS-One Knights of the Four Elements phase, but over our personal time in the spotlight; our paused screenshot in hip-hop’s voracious, incestuous, panoptic whirl of style and attitude. It’s not the death of hip-hop we’re crying over, it’s our inability to relate to Drake and the lack of meaning Jay-Z gives to our lives. But who changed — Jay or us? Hip-hop or the general pop culture’s relationship with hip-hop? Rafi Kam looks at Ice Cube’s commercial for Nike and concludes that nostalgia is one hell of a drug. [Nike, P-Rods, and Falling for the Okey-Doke]

The world tour

Of course it’s a Canadian who forecasts sunnier skies to come. Toronto scribe Dalton Higgins writes in his new book Hip Hop World: A Groundwork Guide that hip-hop grew up and didn’t just move out, it traveled the world and put down roots. Canada offers fertile ground for this kind of thinking, what with Canuck talent lately going all in and the T-dot’s penchant for immigrant stories and diaspora double-dipping, but Higgins says it’s bigger than any scene. Those who want more (or less?) from the 30-or-so year-old genre are just myopic; today’s most exciting rap music probably comes from a teenage dude in Soweto or a girl in Bangladesh. [Hip Hop World: A Groundwork Guide]

“Word Up”: the linkdump series that feels like homework.

Yesterday, young money Dan told vaguely ethnic and working class Vanessa to “give it a rest with ‘the whole rich people suck’ thing.” “Welcome to my world,” she responded at one point to her date’s remark that a polo match was shockingly white.  Silly V, that’s not your world at all! You just somehow always find yourself hanging out there every week. Mobility is a theme; the show’s underage, privileged characters do whatever they want and inhabit whichever sphere they wish, only to once in a while crash with the realization of immaturity and class barriers. Scratch that, even the adults are not immune.

All this semi-awareness, plus the fashion, plus Blair and Chuck role-playing their sexual fantasies to keep their monogamy experiment from boring both themselves and the audience — there’s really nothing out there that is so abysmal and so perfect at the same time. But maybe you don’t have that same level of zen when it comes to your guilty pleasures like we at The Ashcan do. (Yes, Simon recently admitted he likes High School Musical.) If not, here’s some things to help you feel not so dumb when watching a show built around fashion runways and drunk texting:

The Wheel of Morality

The bookworm bloggers over at accurately named Overthinkingit take a look at how the sometimes delinquent or downright criminal activities of Gossip Girl‘s upper-eastsiders rub up against the show’s fairly consistent attitude toward punishment (whether through social sniping or through the long arm of the law). Has Serena’s doggedness in the face of her enemies’ guilt always somehow reminded you of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel? No, you’re not crazy! Bad in bed maybe, but definitely not crazy.

The Economy Stoopid

Earlier this year Rolling Stone did a cover story on the Gossip Girl phenomenon, noting it was perhaps the most culturally relevant and talked about show despite its less than impressive ratings. I can’t find a copy of the article online — which means I’ve repressed the no doubt shameful experience of having read this in public at a bookstore — but I remember the writer extrapolating, fitting the show’s setting and set-ups into the new economy-beaten culture model. Gossip Girl as perhaps the perfect art for America in recession? You’ll have to find a copy of the magazine itself; but if you want to see Blair and Serena licking an ice cream cone click here.

The Fashion

The New York Observer introduces us to designer Abigail Lorick in the fantastically titled “Why You All Look Like Blair Waldorf.” Gossip Girl has had an astonishing impact on fashion, like it or not, and it’s done so by enlisting up-and-comer designers like Lorick instead of merely inking product placement deals with established brands, and by outfitting characters in elegant but nonetheless ambitious choices. Man, I don’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about! Haha I just read the article!

The Race Factor

“Is Gossip Girl ‘Too White’?” asks the blog Gossip Girl Report. The issue of race on Gossip Girl can get more complicated than the more reactionary writers are willing to see (though I love Jen, and you should check out her blog). But Gossip Girl Report looks at demographics for the area the show is set in and clarifies that its racial makeup is alarmingly accurate. Which certainly goes back to my belief that Gossip Girl is of course not about race per se but the colour of its characters are definitely an integral part of the picture it is painting. Decide for yourself; the point is that there’s a valid discussion there and you can totally act familiar when people confront you about your new catchphrase, “I’m Chuck Bass.”

The Post- feminism

Gossip Girl is the indisputable heir to Sex and the City, not so much in what it’s about or how it operates (though there are obvious surface similarities), but in how it represents the next generation’s post-feminist: the pop-soaked, internet savant teenage girl. Obviously teenage girls aren’t a monolithic group nor are generations tidy packages sold separately, but Gossip Girl‘s undeniably fresh pairing of a schoolgirl Twitter sensibility with soap operas, new girl friendship fables matched with old school catty revenge narratives, makes it uncannily satisfying to chew on. Yeah, Blair’s a magnificent capital-B obsessed with power and notoriety, but she’s frighteningly focused on her academics and spends a lot of time swapping Anais Nin and Francois Truffaut references with her friends. Er, enemies. No wait, friends.

“Word Up”: the linkdump series that feels like homework.