Vanity Fair: The Rap Issue

by Kari Tervo

I'm a big supporter of print media. I know I'm sitting here writing on the internet, but there's something more thoughtful and curated and edited about words on a printed page that makes print media very valuable. No, what's on the newsstand isn't breaking news, but you can find breaking news in 7 billion places on the internet (there is one blog for every man, woman, and child on the planet). Magazines are where you find in-depth analysis and commentary on that news, as opposed to the half-baked punditry with click-bait headlines you see rushed out for page hits on the internet. So let's read magazines!

In today's review: The November, 2013 issue of Vanity Fair.

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Royals by Lorde is NOT Racist

by Kari Tervo

Some chick (who I'm not going to name-check) wrote this utter piece of crap, "Wow, That Lorde Song Royals Is Racist" (link redacted because, in her follow-up, she seems to equate page hits with agreement). In her opinion, a song dashed out in 20 minutes by a 16-year old working class girl from New Zealand is inherently racist because--get this--she's "shitting on rappers."

Why does she think this? Because in the song's lyrics, Lorde discusses the culture of excess she hears in popular music and says she's not "caught up in [that] love affair." According to this person who definitely should not be allowed to say things on the internet, "I don’t have to explain why wealth operates differently among folks who’ve grown up struggling because this shit has been explained already: If you grew up with holes in your zapatos you’d celebrate the minute you was having dough."

There are just so many things wrong with what she has published. I am tired of entertaining this woman's pseudo-intellectual identity politics, so I'll just cover a few of them.

BLING RAP IS A PRODUCT OF 1% IDEALS

First of all, bling rap is itself oppressive. You can say all you want that every poor person would write obnoxious shit about consumer items, but that itself is bullshit identity politics. I grew up in a trailer (yep, had some holes in my blue KMart zapatos--wait, was I not poor enough? Or was I too white to really suffer?). I rap, and I write rap. I know for a fact that if I ever hit it big in rap, I most certainly would not be writing about expensive consumer crap, because I have more important things to say. I'm sure that chick would say, "Well, then, the brown people would be shouting it from the rooftops," but that itself is also racist, bullshit identity politics. Okay, so you have to admit you can't speak for every poor person. What, so now you speak for every brown person?

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