Postmodernity, the Mass Media Fringe, and the 'Who Gives a Shit?' Attitude That I Used to Have and Maybe Still Do

Girl Talk's new album came out today. Or yesterday, or two days ago, depending on how long this post is in draft limbo (four days, it turns out).

If you don't know, Girl Talk is a recording artist who takes music samples from pop, rock and hip-hop, cuts them up, rearranges them, and makes an album length tapestry out of these samples, then posts them online for free.

Two questions:

1. Is it art?

2. Who gives a shit?

For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to focus on one specific minute of the album, specifically 5:25 to 6:29 of the second track, "Let It Out," on the album.

So, question one: Is it art?

First of all I'm going to admit that I'm only focusing on this particular minute of the entire album for two reasons: one being that it features a sample by Fugazi, the second being that it blew my mind.

The Fugazi song that Girl Talk (real name Greg Gillis, so I guess that's what I'll call him from now on) samples here is "Waiting Room." It's arguably their most famous song and it's about being in prison, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Both the song and the sample start out with the reggae influenced bassline, the kind of musical style that propelled the band to its great status within their time (and now, I guess). Eventually it enters into a guitar riff that follows the bass' lead. Now, on top of that, Gillis layers on Rhianna's voice, specifically the first verse, pre-chorus, and chorus to her song "Rude Boy."

The musical connections there are easy enough to make. A reggae influenced bass line with a song a about rudeboys. It's a relatively simple aural asssociation.

But let's take a look at the deeper political connotations of the pairing. Sure, the primary usage for Gillis' music is booty-shaking, and I love my share of booty-shaking, but the dude was a bio-medical engineer before he started making music full time. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt of being smart enough to realize these things.

So, political connotations. Like I said before, "Waiting Room" is about being in prison and how nobody gives a shit about you if you're in prison. "Rude Boy" is obviously about rudeboys, a Jamaican musical subculture with ties to poverty and gang violence. Over the Fugazi sample, Rhianna sings "c'mon rude boy boy, can you get it up?/c'mon rude boy boy, is you big enough?"

She's talking about dicks, guys.

And not just dicks, but, of course, masculinity. Are you man enough to have sex with Rhianna?



But contextualized within the title of her song, she's also talking to the masculinity of poor, disenfranchised black youths. Disenfranchised minorities is something Fugazi knows, and makes music, a lot about. Growing up in D.C. during the 80's will do that to you.




But here, the questioning of masculinity is juxtaposed against a song about prison. The statement I gather from is that maybe a lot of poor black guys are in prison because of how hard they need to prove their masculinity, and thus, their worth in a society that doesn't seem to see them as "big enough." This one minute of sampling two musical acts that have very little to do with each other makes a pretty bold political statement about society's treatment of disenfranchised minorities.

I've heard Rhianna's "Rude Boy" a couple of of times, and it's a pretty sweet song. I've heard Fugazi's "Waiting Room" a whoooooole fuck ton of times because I think it's awesome. I would never consider myself dissecting a Rhianna song for the socio-political commentary, nor did I ever think of seeing Fugazi's "Waiting Room" through the the specific lens of Jamaican youths.

That's not even mentioning that never in a million years would I figure Rhianna and Fugazi work so well together.

There's a perspective on art, held by the Russian Formalists (but you really didn't need to know that), that the most important aspect of art is defamiliarization. That is, taking the normal and everyday, putting it into a different context, thus forcing the viewer to see the normal in a different perspective, and so, not-normal. I'd say for me Gillis does this very well.

So this is art.

You could argue that it isn't because all he is is taking other people's art, cutting them up, mixing them together, and calling it his own, but you'd be wrong. There's a certain level of expertise that Gillis brings to the game: he has an amazing ear for both melody and timing. He can synthesize backing guitar tracks from 70's pop-rock with contemporary underground hip-hop, altering both to make them fit, and make something completely new out of it.

So yeah, there's that.

BUT WHOOOOOOOOOO CARES?!?!?!?!?

Well a lot of people, actually. Especially the artist. Why does an artist create? Why do musicians do music? Why do writers write? Sure, because they're inspired, and they want to say something, and they want to make money, and they want to get laid etc. etc. But REALLY. Why?

Because they're scared of death. Who isn't?

Heavy, right?

Creating something beautiful that's truly worth preserving is an attempt at immortality: to have your name, and their for your self, be mentioned far after your dead is the closest thing we've got. Those who succeed at making art that truly reverberate within the culture end up becoming immortal. You know who's immortal? Ernest Hemingway. Miles Davis. Andy Warhol. Those guys are probably going to stay alive forever, as long as we, as people, keep them within the canon of their respective fields. That's our duty. That's our responsibility.

But in this postmodern world, where everybody is referencing everybody, and everybody is doing something, how do we differentiate the good in the bad? For instance there are tons of mashups on YouTube, most of which are shitty shit shit shit. My goodness, they're horrible. What separates them from Gillis? Two things: quality and prolificness. Gillis does it better. He has a better ear than most, and picks from a wider range of music. Also, most of his samples lasts roughly a minute or less, sometimes layering on more than three samples at a time. And he does this for the length of an entire album. That in itself is a feat.

Gillis is above the rest. That is true. But what's so difficult about this today, is that there's SO MUCH SHIT out there in the world. Everyone has a voice, everyone has the access to make something. Even I have a voice. Am I worth listening to? Since you've gotten this far into whatever this thing is, then you must have a reason for doing so. Hopefully it's the quality of the post, but I don't need my ego stroked any more.

But Gillis perhaps best represents the paradox of art in the Internet age. He might be considered "low art" considering his usage of popular music and its accessibility as nothing but a soundtrack to parties. But I'd argue that he's very much up there in the "high art" category because of the multitude of complex ideas presented by his juxtapositions. But he's also working within a musical form within which he is the only exception to banality. But who's to say? He won't win a Grammy, ever, simply because he's not on a major label. And he'll never be on a major label because a lot of what he's doing is very illegal. The Grammy's suck, too.

So who's to say if he's art or not? Who's to say if he's worth sticking into the canon? Somebody must be. Is it popular opinion? I fucking hope not. If popular opinion was the main factor in deciding high art from low art, we'd be in a bad, bad, bad fucking place.

You know who should have the say? Critics. Critics who are knowledgeable about whatever field they're criticizing. It seems to be the only way. But is that even possible? With the Internet, everybody's a critic. Every Amazon commenter on movies seems to think he/she has the same weight as someone educated like A.O. Scott or Roger Ebert or something.

This is really hard to think about. I'm not going to solve this in a blog post. The very fact that this is a blog post is part of the problem I'm trying to represent (how meta of me).

It's important to pick out the few and the good from the ugly masses. Because if we don't, then there really won't be a point.




Edit: Just a thought I came up with. Maybe the quality of a work dictates itself the level of its own artistic quality. Gillis shouldn't need others to promote his work as art for him. People should be able to discern for themselves. Of course this is an ideal. The solution to get there? Well, it's the solution to get anywhere: education. If from the start, kids are educated on the quality of works, then the world would be a better place. If English classes were better from the start, maybe shit like Harry Potter wouldn't be so highly regarded. If music were taken more seriously from the start, maybe more common people would start paying attention to the challenging noise/jazz/experimental guitar music of Nels Cline. Maybe. Hopefully?