The Sound of the Suburbs
It appears to have become autumn some time over the past couple of weeks, and as the season of filthy, choking fogs and inexplicable public transport delays is now upon us, it seems only natural that a Man of Taste and Substance’s thoughts turn to…rap music.
Anyway, this is what I was thinking a few nights back as I was driving the Editor back from some tedious new media binge, at which he’d been overindulging on Mexican bottled lagers, and was as a result in unusually high spirits. I was, therefore, not entirely surprised when he started nodding his head along to a particularly improbable track on the radio – I believe it was Kanye West.
“Ah, so the middle classes are finding hip hop acceptable this month, are they?” I sneered. He turned round as if he’d been shot, or perhaps (as I was quick to point out) like someone had put a cap in his ass, or whatever the phrase is.
“What do you mean?” he glowered accusingly. “This is critically acclaimed stuff! This is good!”
He had, of course, fallen right into my conversational trap.
“Ah, so this is the good hip hop then, is it?” I said. “Sunday supplements thought highly of this one, did they?”
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” he said, obviously sensing that I was preparing something. He was right.
“I think,” I said, “that you’re allowing yourself to enjoy this particular example of the genre because sections of the media – by which I mean the sections you read – have told you it’s OK to do so. I mean, let’s face it, it’s not as if this is that nasty…ooh…misogynistic rap music or anything”. I waited for the tirade that I knew was coming.
“It’s got nothing to do with that!” the Editor fumed. “This stuff is inspired! The fact it doesn’t feel the need to plumb any depths of shallow consumerism, you know, glorifying a guns-and-drugs culture, is neither here nor…” I stopped him at this point.
“OK, let’s say something is, musically speaking, superbly produced. Wonderful. But let’s say the lyrics discuss, I dunno, something utterly unnaceptable. Criminal activity. Real Daily Mail-baiting stuff. What then?”
What followed was, of course, the usual run of middle-class drivel, starting with a citation of certain ‘intelligent’ artists and taking a meandering path through the ‘gritty’ nature of early blues lyrics (though this rather undermined his argument) through to the generally disappointing nature of the fact that people who were trying to find a way out of crippling poverty might then attempt to spend the money on nice material objects. I yawned.
“Sorry, you’re talking bollocks,” I said. “Can’t have a gritty urban music without a little urban grit, can you?” His response was not really suitable for a family web magazine, so I’ll pass over it.
“Don’t worry”, I said. “I’m not trying to label you as prejudiced or anything, heaven forbid. I’m just trying to point out that you have little understanding of such music because ultimately you can’t really understand the experience of being from a different social class, and thus you’re a little scared of it.” The Editor looked distinctly sulky.
“Are you trying to suggest that I…fear the poor?” he snarled.
“I’m telling you you do,” I said. I made a gesture as if to plough the car into a nearby wall before he could begin shouting again. “Look,” I said. “Imagine what a world would be like where this kind of music was defined by essentially middle-class values.”
I invited him to speculate on a music where men boasted about the floor they’d sanded at the weekend, or the amount of original Victorian features their house had; where they drew one’s attention to the amount they regularly gave to charity, perhaps, or the amount of their favourite songs their new iPod could hold; where they flaunted the smallness and obscurity of the restaurants they regularly dined at; where instead of the glorious, cartoon-wealth indicators of champagne and caviar, obscure ethnic cuisines were bandied about. I told him to imagine a man bellowing about the wonderful tagine he got from his local North African eatery. “Even worse”, I said, “imagine if a City broker or corporate lawyer or someone really acquisitive started committing his values and aspirations onto tape. The results would be almost unbearably vicious. Every record store in the country would ban it.”
“Christ,” he said, slightly crestfallen. “It’s a tedious prospect, isn’t it?”
“I’m glad to have put you on the right track”, I said. “After all, there are idiotic and venal lyrics in every musical form. I mean, have you actually listened to a Franz Ferdinand song recently?” I stopped the car; This was a particularly rough-looking stretch of road. It was getting foggy, and the sodium glare of the streetlamps lent the East London streets a perceptible atmosphere of melancholy and menace.
“What are we doing?” said the Editor.
“I think it’s time you started to get a bit closer to the interests of the urban poor,” I said, opening the door and pushing him roughly onto the pavement. I slammed the door shut again with a chortle.
“Hey!” he shouted, banging frantically on the window. I waved cheerily. After a few seconds he stopped, and looked slightly puzzled.
“Well, what are the interests of the urban poor, then?” he asked, hoping I’d unlock the door again.
“God knows”, I said. “At the moment, your wallet and iPod, probably”. I put my foot to the floor and accelerated away, the Editor’s enraged screams receding rapidly into the distance.
Epilogue
Sad to report, the Editor turned up at work the next day as if nothing had happened, although I did notice a brief item in my local newspaper a few days later. “Heartless mugger sought”, it said. It seemed that some nights back a gentleman had been roughly pushed to the ground by a tall, expensively-dressed man in a stripy scarf, who had proceeded to demand the exact bus fare to the nearest tube station, plus the directions to said station, accompanying the whole with threats, menaces, and a certain amount of incomprehensible muttering about popular music, before running off yelling incoherently. As I suspected, there’s nothing scarier than the middle classes when their blood’s really up.