Lil B “County Blues” (Internet, 2010) (from the fortcoming #BlackKen mixtape)
As B begins making his in-roads to mainstream/large independent media (which arguably still exists even in our hyper-niched musical landscape), it will be interesting to see what side of the fence people come down on. (Pitchfork seems to be embracing the #BASED — thanks in no small part to that (horrible) hipster remix shit they posted the other day) while other sites are staunchly un-based or choose to ignore him.
However, that’s not what I’m here to discuss (Noz and Matthew Africa already covered both sides of the coin). No, what I want to talk about, and what I have the hardest time reconciling, is the tone of a site like The Smoking Section (which I happen to genuinely like, and read often).
On the one hand, they just ran a feature pitting Lil B against Arab (phonetically A-Rab…of course it is) in a “Fight For Bad Music Supremacy”. Ok, that’s fine, obviously not everyone is going to ride for B. But then I just came across this post, which, while obviously not supportive of the track, nonetheless makes available “All I Know” with its Soulja Boy and Waka Flocka features.
Now, I take issue with this because, while “incendiary is the new black”, I think it is bullshit (not to mention a waste of time) to post about music (and other “news) merely to arouse the ire of your core readership (what up, Bol…). It’s cheap and it’s easy, and it adds nothing to the discourse on that music to say a track is “like herpes dipped in battery acid with AIDS garnish drizzled on top.”
As I said earlier, though, fine…you aren’t with what B is doing artistically (or, “artistically”). I like him, you don’t, whatever. However, for the life of me, I can’t understand why, when the pipeline of new music is constantly overflowing, that sites still find the need to post about music they (and their readers) clearly hate…that is, other than the fact that B, and to a much greater extent, Soulja Boy, have large followings on Twitter, and provide their followers with links to wherever their music is posted, regardless of editorial tone.
It follows, then, that whenever a site posts music by these artists with 23,000 (Lil B) and 2.1 million (Soulja Boy) followers, it’s clearly going to give them a pretty significant bump in web traffic (I don’t think I’m going out on a limb with that conclusion). Now, maybe I’m looking at this too simplistically, but I really can’t see any other motivation to post music that one thinks owes “an apology to his mom and my ears” when there are plently of NSFW pics of Cassie and emaciated 50 Cent cameos to write about.
Really, the whole thing goes back to something Rob Pursey from Southern Hospitality said a while ago: “Shoutout to those sites putting on for the music they love and not the music they hate.”* Everywhere you go on the internet there’s far, far too much unnecessary hate being spewed both by bloggers and, of course, by commenters. I just think that takes a lot more time and effort to search out and write passionately about music you enjoy rather than throwing up a post about a song you hate and comparing it with a sexually transmitted disease.
The irony in all of this, too, is that we’re talking about Lil B here — the most positive artist currently working in rap music (seriously…regardless of how many hoes he may talk about having on his dick — the line that a majority of his detractors fall back on most often to “prove” he’s a terrible rapper and hypocrite). People, let alone artists, are not simplistic, 2-D characters with perfectly complimentary viewpoints. It’s called the human condition. And it’s something B is conveying better as a 20 year old “pretty bitch” than some artists could even attempt to understand at 40.
I sincerely hope that’s not completely lost on those that feel the need to spread hate.
*I may be paraphrasing Rob there, I can’t find the exact quote.
