why we fight #15

agrammar:

Is here, and spins off

from a piece I ran last week

which can be found here.

—Basho

trans. Kenneth Rexroth

in this week’s episode of “Nathan’s gonna claim that intelligent people who are better writers than him said EXACTLY WHAT he was thinking”: Nitsuh Abebe’s thoughts on Kreayshawn.

Seriously, though, when I first saw the Clutch magazine piece I disagreed with it in two main ways: I don’t think she’s as talentless as many people like to think (she may not fit your conception of a ‘talented rapper’ but when you’re talking about a girl who’s done work with Lil B in the past and talks in Nitsuh’s original piece about her admiration for Waka Flocka Flame in spite of his lack of traditional hip-hop talent, perhaps the problem is that you need to look at what she’s doing in a different way. (Anyway, “Gucci Gucci” is catchy and the funny lines seem to me to be funny because they’re supposed to be)), and I felt a little uncomfortable with the same line brought up in the Pitchfork piece: “I don’t believe for one second her image is authentic!”

And ultimately although I wanted to say something about that accusation that she dresses/acts the way she does in order to get attention and peddle herself, rather than because that’s who she really is, I didn’t, because who am I to say that she is or isn’t authentic? All I’d seen was a single video and an endorsement from Bears Eat Beats (worth mentioning: not only would I say BDT is a fantastic rap blogger, but he’d already happened to have seen her perform live prior to the hoopla over “Gucci Gucci”). Plus, to be honest, I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want to sound like the guy denying issues of racism in music, nor did I want to act like she’s immune to all criticism (whether directed at her level of talent, use of racial language, or otherwise).  Because I’ll admit, a lot of Kreayshawn’s popularity probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for her race. I’m just not ready to claim that she’s being someone other than herself.