How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boys, Mr. Rap? (NYT Article)

[*L*E*G*A*C*Y*]

It’s morning in Macklemore’s America.

At last month’s Grammys, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won four awards, three in rap categories, the sort of pigs-flying moment that gets prognosticators to prognosticating, and self-designated cultural protectors to fuming. Here was a pop-inclined white hip-hop act that had leapfrogged to juggernaut status in barely a year and in turn become a bellwether of racial shifts in the genre.

But Macklemore’s breakthrough is merely the mass-market debut of a phenomenon that’s been happening for some time — white rappers performing for predominantly white audiences. The crisis of hip-hop’s whitening flares up every couple of years when a white rapper experiences a great deal of success, but the sort of success Macklemore has achieved has been fundamentally different from those who preceded him in form and scale. This has been happening for years in subcultural spaces, where it’s been less of a threat to the genre’s center.

But it’s indubitable that, moving forward, there will be even more rooms like Irving Plaza on Friday night, where Aer, a white hip-hop and reggae duo, was performing to an almost exclusively white audience.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/a...d-reggae-duo-plays-irving-plaza.html?src=recg

[URL='http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Frapgenius.com%2F535538%2FIce-cube-us%2FPretty-soon-hip-hop-wont-be-so-nice-no-ice-cube-just-vanilla-ice&ei=wT39Urhup87TAfjhgagM&usg=AFQjCNEzwklQNjU41mAmyUaZl_-ekO-ZBw&sig2=NCnDDQ3ErwKv_0lyrWzHeg&bvm=bv.61190604,d.dmQ']Pretty soon hip-hop won't be so nice No Ice Cube, just Vanilla Ice

Ice Cube- Us

[/URL]

 

[zayk35]

Yep and there ain't a thing we can do to stop it

 

[*L*E*G*A*C*Y*]

Yep and there ain't a thing we can do to stop it

Yeah, it's going to be weird to see where hip-hop goes ten/five years from now. Its weird now. Sometimes I just feel old but I just can't get with it.

 

[zayk35]

Yeah, it's going to be weird to see where hip-hop goes ten/five years from now. Its weird now. Sometimes I just feel old but I just can't get with it.[/quote

Same here

 

[Durrbrowski]

we'll create some new shyt. don't know why nikkas worried. Look at Rock. A white boy will argue with you up and down that they created that shyt out of thin air.