This has been a really bad week for rappers I love coming under inappropriate fire, so I just want to link to a couple things that I was happy to read.
First: Kitty’s defense of Danny Brown for Noisey
I saw Danny Brown last week in Chicago and it was so intense and insane and fun that I had to sleep for about 14 hours afterwords to regain my energy. Brown’s a born performer who will tell any audience that they’re at a party, not a concert, which made his assault all the more depressing. He hasn’t spoken out about the incident, which is probably wise from a PR standpoint (assault victims are not always treated well in the media for the understatement!) but he’s got a strong and thoughtful voice in tourmate Kitty. The whole article is full of poignant moments, but she sums up her argument in one line: “It’s because everyone wants the option of blaming it on Danny, because people can’t accept the fact that a white girl raped a black dude in front of a bunch of people.”
Second: Tyler, The Creator on his Mountain Dew Commercial for Billboard
Tyler takes so much shit and I’ve found people to be generally so closed off to hearing any pro-Tyler arguments. He almost always refuses to speak seriously in regards to any controversy and anyone waiting for a way into the “real” Tyler will almost certainly walk away defeated before finding it. I’ll be a little cynical here and say that I’m guessing he was in some way obligated to sit for this interview, but he gives his silly side a rest and talks honestly about his work and his viewpoint. Tyler is almost always explicitly subversive and brutal. And in equal measure, any sense of smartness or nuance on his part is lost in translation. In his music, detractors only hear hatred and in his commercial, detractors only saw racism. The fact that the clip’s line-up was just Tyler’s friends is a heartbreaking detail that I think really speaks to how complex all these issues are and how unfair Tyler’s media dis-respect is.
Before the Onion called Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt I rarely saw people link to Onion articles, but since, I see it on an almost daily basis. It might be that I’m just sensitive to it now, but I suspect it’s a subconscious effort (on the part of the majority) to remind everyone that the Onion aren’t “really” like “that”. That’s bullshit though. I hope no one ever forgets what the Onion did and we all keep feeling queasy about this.
When I was 9 and my sister was 7 we took an ice skating class together in the next town over from ours. Week after week our dad drove us in our family’s Ford Festiva, silver with cloth interiors the exact shade of the newton half of a fig newton cookie, to the Seven Bridges Ice Arena so that we could marginally learn to skate forward, backward, swivel, and bunny jump like our hero, Michelle Kwan. Most weeks we’d listen to Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club, which while no one’s favorite was something that both dad and daughters could agree on. Nearly twenty years later, I can’t remember the last time I ice skated, but I can still hear Tuesday Night Music Club in my head. Sometimes I wonder if this was a long con my dad played on me.
Beautiful, Radiant, Glowing, Non-Toxic Skin Care Salad
Give, or take. According to the powers of science, certain or all vegetables are good for your skin via full of water and healthy minerals or vitamins. Particularly, if you have sensitive and/or dry and/or redness prone skin (ding!) cucumber and tomato are supposed to beneficial. I don’t really like cucumber that much because it’s like green flavored water with a texture, but here’s a salad I make because, like everyone, I could stand to eat more vegetables and I’ve tricked myself into believing they’re Benjamin Buttoning me or making me look skinny pregnant.
1 cucumber, diced
2 tomatos, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 TBSP extra virgin olive oil
2 TBSP red wine vinegar
salt, pepper
combine in a tupperware container.
My skin has been looking pretty good and it’s not like I stopped my heavy drinking, so it must be this salad!
I think that in the next ten years you’ll see that turn around. Did you hear about this device that they have made, but you won’t see anywhere? Imagine walking through a record store, and there’s a database of everything that’s ever been put out, from obscure imports to Bon Jovi. You tell them which one you want, you pay with a credit card, and with high speed it downloads onto a digital cassette. You put your order in and ten minutes later, here’s your CD quality cassette. Your artwork gets mailed to you and shows up the next day. What does that do? It eliminates retail altogether. No more Tower Records (though you can see how they could stick around).
From THIS interview with Trent Reznor (1994).
I meant to be working on something else, but then I got an urge to read old Trent Reznor interviews and now I feel like looking through interviews with popular musicians that are post internet and pre piracy to see who got the closest to predicting the future. Trent’s really close! Later the interviewer is like “What do you think the Information Superhighway or the National Information Infrastructure will do for music?” and I’m like “Aw! There was no word for ‘internet’ in 1994!”
![theatlantic:
Scientific Explanations for Why Spoilers Are So Horrible
Spoilers suck because they remind us that a story is just a story. It’s hard to get transported when you already know where you’ll end up—in real life, you don’t have that knowledge.
Read more. [Image: PBS]
Thanks for spoiling why spoilers are horrible, Atlantic. I was waiting for that transcendent moment only death can provide to explain why spoilers are so frustrating. Now I have nothing left to live for.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/efcd6ff06671f929d32bf828e9e90976/tumblr_mk0kzcjQTe1qcokc4o1_400.jpg)
