Signifying Rappers by David Foster Wallace

Author:David Foster Wallace [WALLACE, DAVID FOSTER/COSTELLO, MARK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music / Genres & Styles - Rap & Hip Hop
ISBN: 9780316401111
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2013-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

If this were an MGM musical, now might be an excellent moment for Barbara Eden to break into song, leading everybody (Malcolm X, the Tampa Police Chief, Dr. Bellows) in rings around the Chryslers in the carport. Instead, the civil rights rivals are scripted to see the folly of their feud. Uniting, they placate the rioters. Order is restored, and a chastised Tampa Police Chief vows that in future things will be more just. His attack dog barks in cheerful agreement, prompting the inevitable sitcom close: ‘That makes it unanimous!’ (Uneasy Laughter. Applause.)

Rap’s sampling of I Dream of Jeannie blends homage and rampage, celebrating the open-ended transferability of shared culture and attacking the segregation of the icon by mock-integrating it. Another pantomime of desegregation comes from Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way,” a monster hit among young whites in ’86 that samples Aerosmith’s equally huge ’77 hit so extensively that it is unclear without checking the record jacket who’s sampling whom. The cut’s MTV incarnation, surely the most widely seen rap video ever, flaunts rap’s Cain-and-Abel relationship with heavy metal, itself the ‘house music’ of Burger Kings in Howard Beach, Queens.

Run-DMC practice in a ratty ghetto back room. Their labors are disrupted by thunderous metal chords, which we—being a typical Tuesday-at-3-PM MTV audience—recognize as Aerosmith, a hard-rocking Boston foursome redolent of Pabst-sneaking on soccer fields a decade ago. Not good memories, but strong ones.

The joke is that in the Burger Kings of Hollis, Queens, Aerosmith is merely bad, unfamiliar noise, and Run-DMC can barely stand it, making fingers-in-ears gestures to one another, mimicking for a splendid moment suburban Dads yelling upstairs for Junior to turn down that goddamn stereo. They snap out of Dad mode, however, coming through the busted wall, looking to leave Adidas prints on whoever’s responsible. Beyond the wall they find, naturally enough, an Aerosmith stadium extravaganza like those of yore fronted by lead singer Steve Tyler dressed in the same stupid elf-wizard outfit he was wearing last time anyone was paying attention. The rappers menace Tyler, and a sick pleasurable fear rises in our MTV-watching hearts: B-boys have invaded the white side of the ’70s, and wouldn’t it be a horrible relief to have rap, for once, act out the violence it suggests? Wouldn’t we love to hate to see rap kick heavy metal’s acne’d ass, swinging guitars (so often, since Elvis, wielded as icons of beatings, as dildo-guns or dildo-axes) to silence the guitarists?

But no, we’re teased again. Run-DMC decide they like this stuff, and the two groups join unlikely forces. Steve Tyler, who can’t dance, teaches everybody how.

Ironies abound, of course, as ironies must when cash and art do lunch. Tearing down the prop-thin symbolic walls, Run-DMC aim to celebrate desegregation, but miss the fact that Aerosmith, those whitest of white rockers, are merely big-budget Led Zeppelin rip-offs, and that Led Zep came straight outta the jet-black Rhythm & Blues of Chicago’s Chess Records. Dancing with Steve Tyler, Run-DMC forget that Muddy Waters’s sideman Willie Dixon had to sue Led Zeppelin to get proper credit for their use of his blues.

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