Freak Convergences In Pop Culture: Framing Hanley Versus Lil Wayne

This will surprise no one but The Snob hates Lil Wayne with a passion. Not personally of course. I'm sure he's a swell sort of gross looking dude. Nice by the bundles, but I can't say I'm a fan. I loathe the overuse of Autotune on nearly every rap/R&B single right now and since Lil Wayne is a chronic offender I am chronically offended by his alleged "music."

But, this doesn't mean The Snob is a music snob. I'm a snob about a lot of things, but my music collection pretty much runs the gamut from "look how sophisticated and astute I am" Nina Simone to a "What are you? Twelve?" 99 cent download of the Jonas Brothers "Burnin' Up." I can enjoy crappy pop music with the best of them, I just have my limits and Lil Wayne's ode to fellatio is one of those limits. Not only is the thought of Lil Wayne singing about his ding-a-ling on "Lollipop" gross to me, the whole song gives me a bad case of the Linda Blairs, complete with pea soup spitting action and colorful cursing. But imagine my confusion when I cursed the net and found this cover one evening.

(To see the actual music video, click here, but you have to sit through nearly two minutes of boring kids boring talking about banal, drunken suburban shizz before they rock out with the cock out to some Young Weezy reinterpretation.)

I don't know who these Flaming Henley people are, other than they look like horrid Fall Out Boy clones, but I was amazed at the mileage they managed to push out of Wayne's "Lollipop," taking your standard, rouchy club track and turning it into vintage "cock rock," emo Def Leppard-style, recalling a pop punk "Pour Some Sugar On Me."

Back in the day, habitual song murder Pat Boone would have de-crunked the shit out of any sexuality laden bit of black music he shlacked. Boone was known for his ability to easily de-bone and regurgitate "race music" for the skittish, demure white masses. Something for the folks who just couldn't handle Little Richard's pompadoured, fey sexual chocolate and fainted at just the mere thought of Chuck Berry's precious, white girl lovin' ding-a-ling. But what do you call it when a white, suburban rock band covers classic Negro raunch and keeps all the raunch, just removes the Negro?

The song is still rather gauche, yet different. And you can't really say they necessarily made it more palatable. The white masses, no longer being held back by their stogy anti-race music grandparents, love Lil Wayne to the tune of millions of illegal downloads. Hell, indie rock internet queen Marie Digby covered he and The Game's "My Life" practically verbatim in the style of Lilth Fair and it somehow became some flowery folk American paean akin to a Dawson's Creek-ification of "House of the Rising Sun."

What seems truly apparent is how much American music, created by whites and blacks, influences one another. How blacks created Rock N' Roll, how white musicians took Rock N' Roll and changed it up, eventually creating their own style distinctly different, yet obviously related sound. And when you throw it altogether and actually keep the integrity (as opposed to committing the soft bigotry of lowered expectations that was Boone's shtick), what you have in the end is the elements of what made the song an attractive song to people in the first place.

People like Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" because it is a sexual fantasy you can dance to, the classic ingredients for a party song. Framing Hanley kept the sex, the fantasy and the dancing, but lost the Autotune, added guitars and some rock bravado I thought was long dead since the advent of Grunge in the 1990s.

Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden and the like effectively killed all rock music that was about solely about party penis power, largely because grunge was so serious and Guns N' Roses, the last arena rock act standing, was not. Alternative rock eventually became a very pop slickened medium, whether pretty boy introspective (The Fray or Coldplay), hopelessly twee (Belle and Sebastian) or whatever the hell My Chemical Romance is supposed to be. (Emo-metal? Melodic punk?)

Rap music, on the other hand, maintained its sex driven streak despite the different flavors of the genre available. You could go for something enlightened or you could go for something gangster, but sex and rap music (just like sex and black music in general) have pretty much gone stayed the same. Never has one ethnicity wrote so many different odes to fornication in so many styles. It's not that we don't have other things to sing about, but sex appears to be a favorite topic. While the men of rock were getting in touch with the softer side of Sears, rap music was trying to figure out how they could make the song more explicit. "Lollipop" was a track made for the strip clubs (much like "I'm In Luv Wit A Stripper" and pretty much everything T-Pain sings).

But if Soundscan is to be believed, Lil Wayne's style of pop is the thing the kids are into these days, regardless of pigmentation, leaving me to wonder:

When you produce Wayne's pop with only a slight format change, are you creating a revolution in your genre (is this the return of white boys singing proudly about their dicks again?) or is this a pathetic attempt to stand out from the emo pack by hopping on Tattoo Face's leaf overs? Did they make the song better? Did they make it worse? Was the song beyond redemption anyway, so no cover mattered? Will this take us back to how country and R&B artists would regular cover each others hits because the genres were similar enough to make the song a successful, but the audiences were so far removed that they wouldn't even know whether you were listening to Buck Owens covering Ray Charles or Ray Charles covering Buck Owens? (Or for folks my age, country singer Mark Wills twanging up some Brian McKnight versus country fans who had no clue who Brian McKnight originally wrote and performed "Back At One?" Or pop/R&B boy band All-4-One's habitual country track ripping?)

I'm thinking this is a one-off gimmick/tribute to what's technically hot in the streets. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just the latest bizarre hybrid born out something singularly American pop music.

Get Yer Geek On!

Comic collector alert! Spider-Man meets the president-elect!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #583, available in comic book shops nationwide on January 14th, 2009. Look for the special variant cover by artist Phil Jimenez featuring the President-Elect and Spider-Man!

Also for your viewing pleasure --

More "YOUNG BARRY: The Man Who Would Be President." (From Obama Pics Daily)

And yes, Jamaica Funk. That's what it is. Let it get into you. (Actually, I think this was taken at a Jazz Festival, but, whatever. In my mind that's what he's grooving to.)

And for your latest in EXTREME OBAMA, an electronic puppet edition of "WTF???"

It reminds me of those fake flowers with sunglasses in pots that used to dance to the radio that were big in the 90s.

Ozaki iMini Pets Animatronic Obama - Who wants a Muppet Barack Obama to sing and dance along with their favorite tunes? Hands higher, please! Higher! (Yahoo! Today In Tech blog)

Said Snob reader, Lesa, "I guess they want a presidential Bojangles?"

RuPaul IS RuBama!!!

Heee-larious, plus all kinds of fierce. Much better than Tyra's Michelle O. impersonation from this fall. And RuPaul beats her down from both sides, working that dress we all hated! But then, I'm biased. I love me some RuPaul. You betta work!

The only down side to this will be the lazy "Michelle is a man" jokes that will develop from this. Lame! Can't we simply enjoy some crazy RuPaul without the rudeness? He, and his fabulous drag persona, would NOT approve. (TMZ)

When Usher Impersonators Hawk McNuggets

I can't decide if he's parodying anyone specific or simply doing a parody of a parody of a parody about fast food and R&B music videos. McDonald's tends to make amazingly dumb commercials when they are geared towards African Americans (remember "Calvin" getting a job at McDonald's, as later parodied by Dave Chappelle? Or a then unknown Tyrese Gibson singing on a bus? Oops. That was Coca Cola. Or that horrible little kid with the boombox in the "Cha Cha Slide" commercial about the apple dippers? Or anything involving rapping?) This commercial is amazingly cornball, but it's in that catagory of "corny things I love" right now. It didn't make me want to buy any nuggets, but I did find the words "McNugget lovin'" have officially entered my lexicon. Way to go, Madison Avenue!

Old News: Halle Berry Gets Hot & Political and Somewhere Slick Willy Smiles

Somehow I don't think our 42nd president of the United States minds this homage AT ALL.

I imagine former President Bill Clinton is hiding an entire stash of these Esquires featuring Halle Berry as him on his Esquire cover at his New York estate or in his Harlem office -- possibly next to that inaugural copy of George Magazine with Cindy Crawford as George Washington on the cover. (Man, I miss George ... and its founder.)

Bill will tell you, sexy ladies dressed as ex-presidents are hot and no one would appreciate this more than him, our former fornicator-in-chief. I imagine he's still smarting a bit over the whole Hillary v. Obama, Jesse Jackson, all-the-Negroes-hate-me-now-and-my-life-sucks thing he's been going through since February, but seeing Halle in no pants dressed like him ... yeah ...

Bill's good now. All good.

By-the-way, for those who don't know, Esquire named Halle sexiest woman in the history of the world or something earlier this month for their November issue. I knew she'd won the accolade, but didn't realize they'd chosen to have her pose as the Comeback Kid. (Hence my "old news." I totally would have reported this had I'd known about the political slant.) I say, bully for her. She deserves it. To me, her acting is questionable, but if there was a contest in Hollywood purely based on who could look the most hot, sans pants, dressed like Bill Clinton on a magazine cover -- no contest.

Represent!

In other news: People Magazine posted this papparazzi picture of Berry with a curly 'fro and over sized aviator shades. Again, (for the curly 'fro snob girls), represent!

Politics Break: White People Who Sing Like Black People

For all you relatively new Snob readers my blog has not typically been all politics all the time. Things were a bit more balanced with the racial issues, the pop culture, the who is "sexy" definitions, occasional blog post series and rant. But I tend to write about what I'm excited over, so naturally that would be Sarah Palin striking out on softballs like "what's your favorite newspaper" and "name a Supreme Court decision you hated other than Roe v. Wade."

Seriously. I can name a few off the top of my head that I hated (Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Hazelwood Central High School case that determined that high school students didn't have the right to free speech and a later case involving a kid with a joke sign -- blunts for Jesus -- that backed that decision up, etc., etc. Maybe John McCain should have picked me!)

But that's besides the point. I want to talk (write) about something I've been thinking about for the past three days and that is the phenomenon of white people who sing like black people.

Now there have always been white people who have tried (successfully and unsuccessful) to mime the sounds of rural Southern blues guys and gals or the upbeat tenors of the Northern soul stars of Stax and Motown. And who can blame them? Along with American Folk and country music, the blues' twangy, pickin' and grinnin' cousin, black music (spirituals/gospel, blues, jazz, soul, funk, R&B and hip hop) is American music. When four guys in Liverpool, England wondered what America sounded like they weren't thinking of Woody Guthrie and John Phillip Sousa.

Early rock n' roller and chronic music theft victim Little Richard will gladly tell you that they, Disney and everyone else ripped him off.

I realize that some of the popularity of black music had to do with the fact that originally it was frowned upon to even admit to listening to it outside of, say, Paul Robeson singing "Ol' Man River" from Show Boat and the occasional Nat King Cole medley. But a lot of it had to do with the impassioned moaning, ululating style of singing that typically comes from the diaphragm rather than the throat (like in opera), the use of percussion and our love for pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable to sing about. From secret instructions in songs about the Bible on how to get away on the Underground Railroad to ordering you to "Pitch a wang dang doodle all night long" while dancing in a sexually suggestive manner.

Black music brings people together so it's only natural that a lot of white people, especially those who either grew up influenced by black rock n' roll of the 1950s or grew up watching MTV, would want to sing like the artists they admire the most. The TV show American Idol is living proof of that. I've heard numerous critics lament that the only style of singing the show tends to respect or reward is the screeching, belting, warbling, overwrought power ballads that thread the Aretha Franklin-Whitney Houston-Donna Summer-Celine Dion-Mariah Carey singing continuum.

I'm sorry, fellow music snobs. Trying to emulate Aretha or Etta James or Big Momma Thorton or Betty Wright became mainstream amongst female singers somewhere around 1968. The popularity of Mary J. Blige and Beyonce only reaffirm that the masses like their pop with a lot of black diva in it.

But there was a time when the "white sings black" paradigm was more of a novelty and often didn't involve someone who actually "sounded" black.

Like I'd never mistake Paul McCartney for Jackie Wilson, Mick Jagger for James Brown or Rod Stewart for Sam Cooke. (Not that I'm knocking any of these fellas for trying as I like The Beatles and love both The Rolling Stones and Stewart.) Elvis Presley got closer. If you can get over the fact that he basically took what every successful black bluesman in Memphis was doing and did it when those same black bluesmen could not get on national television and suggestively pump their pelvises for money, you can really enjoy the irony of Elvis crooning "In the Ghetto."

I swear, first time I heard this song when I was twenty it was the biggest "WTF" of my life, I kid you not.

But of this particular era Janis Joplin probably came the closest, raising the level of incredible with "Piece of My Heart," followed by a cadre of 1970s acts including Alicia Bridges, Average White Band, KC and the Sunshine Band, the Bee Gees, a pre-"Say No Go" Hall & Oates and a disco Rod Stewart on a near career respectability wrecking "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy."

Then along came two who, by far, are the black people's most beloved blue-eyed soul singers -- former Doobie Brother Michael McDonald and Tina Marie.

Marie was the first white singer signed by Motown and performed tracks with Rick James. McDonald (who's unusual singing style almost anyone can do a serviceable parody of) has put out excellent soul and R&B and even had the balls to take on Patti LaBelle in one of the greatest love duets of the 1980s, "On My Own."

Marie and the former Dobbie are immensely talented, yet despite their skills the number of white people singing like black people diminished greatly after the 1970s, leaving Marie and McDonald among the few, the proud, the only white R&B singers.

Then something very strange started in the mid-1990s.

At first it was just a few wanderers with mixed results. Like the soulful cool of Lisa Stansfield and the one-hit-wonder that was Jon B. The vanilla flavored alternative to New Edition -- New Kids on the Block.

Celine Dion showed up fresh from Canada with her huge pipes giving Mariah Carey a run for her time on the charts. Then after a plethora of pop boy bands and pop tartlets burst onto the scene, an explosion of white people singing soul and R&B seized the stage.

Christina Aguilera begat P!nk. P!nk begat Justin Timberlake. Timberlake begat Robin Thicke. And then came Jojo, Joss Stone, Anastasia, Amy Winehouse, Sia, Adele, Duffy, James Morrison, etc. A lot of these individuals, no surprise, are British carrying on and perfecting a musical tradition.

These weren't just white people who liked to sing with black people (see George Michael, Elton John, Madonna, Boy George or Annie Lennox). These are white people who sounded almost indistinguishable from their Negro contemporaries. Obviously growing up with a love for old soul and the new, they committed themselves to mastering the attitude and style with mixed cool points from African Americans.

A lot of the Brits get a general pass. Mostly because they're somewhat divorced from our little racial drama here in the US and their music is often not marketed to an urban audience because they're singing classic soul/R&B. As for the Americans, there's a constant debate going on. Black people like Christina Aguilera generally and P!nk has moved away some from her original R&B debut, going rock.

But, you can't bring up Timberlake or Thicke without a fight breaking out. Timberlake is sometimes seen as "the great pretender," the slippery, arrogant individual who cool hyped his way into black music, hiring the best black producers to make up for his shortfalls as a falsetto singer. Others just enjoy Timbaland's production and Timberlake's interpretation.

Thicke is often lumped in with Timberlake, but his falsetto is far superior with more clarity and control. He sometimes gets points for his pure workmanship (and some give him a pass for having a black wife).

But when you're a white American trying to make it in the R&B world with a black audience, not just white people, you're going to catch some additional scrutinty. We're the arbitrars of the cool and we take ownership of it. You sing, we decide if you're in it for the love or the exploitation. Because that's what it comes down to. Black people are forever concerned about being ripped off. Just as Little Richard still cries out for his lost earnings, so many black people are protective of their art, not wanting to see it coopted by individuals who show no love.

The fact is, the market doesn't care.

Americans love black music no matter who is singing it. Therefore Justin Timberlake doesn't have to meet "black" standards. By black standards he'd be fighting it out with Ne-Yo, Trey Songz, Mario and Omarion to get some airplay after Usher Raymond and R. Kelly. (If he would get signed to a label at all.) His sin was that he didn't meet the "standard." He wasn't as good or better than any black performer warbling. He was passable, but assisted by his own fame as the most talented singer in his former boy band. This is different from P!nk and Aguilera (especially P!nk) who both stuck to a more pure pop/R&B format, with P!nk directly going for a black audience when she first debuted.

In the end, things are much different now from how they were when Elvis coopted black style and made himself "The King." Hip hop is so authentically black that white rappers are actually at a terrible disadvantage when trying to get signed and promoted. And black performers now dominate The Grammys and the American Music Awards.

Aguilera has some incredible pipes, but she has to exist at the same time as Beyonce, Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige. Even relative newcomer Keysha Cole could give Aguilera a run for her money. And black people shouldn't worry as much about whether or not Robin Thicke is a poser. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery and our people created one of the most imitated art forms in the world.

Let the white people sing.

Trailer for Biggie Biopic "Notorious"

This movie has a January 2009 release which isn't always the best sign. (Although a February release date is a death knell.) The movie features Angela Bassett as Voletta Wallace, Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace's mother and Derek Luke as Sean "Diddy" Combs. Newcomer Jamal Woolard plays Biggie. I still have a bad "trainwreck" feeling about this and the trailer does not squash that feeling. The director is George Tillman Jr. who helmed both "Barbershop" films, "Soul Food" and "Roll Bounce." He might be able to pull it off. Maybe they'll cut together a better trailer that will make me less skeptical. Although, to be honest, I don't know why this movie is being made. Bad Boy is one of the producers so this isn't going to be an objective piece of art by any stretch. Any Biggie fans out there planning to watch this? (Black Voices)