Static Live Magazine May 2019

y Rick de Yampert
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In hip-hop’s ongoing march to dominate the planet, two recent
setbacks made huge headlines.
Pablo Dylan – yes, he’s the son of Bob “The God” Dylan – decided
to switch teams and ditch his burgeoning rap career to become, get
this, a folk rocker!
Meanwhile, Billboard told rapper Lil Nas X to get the hell of Dodge:
Three weeks after his song “Old Town Road” debuted at No. 19
on Billboard’s Hot Country chart in mid-March, the chart-meisters
decided it wasn’t country enough and gave it the boot -- presumably
one of those pointy-toed, shit-kickin’ boots that Porter Wagoner would
pair with his Nudie suits. (You Millennials who believe rappers have
a monopoly on bling, just google “Porter Wagoner and Nudie Cohn”).
Both the Pablo and Lil Nas X incidents point to this self-apparent
truth: It’s hip-hop’s world – we just live it.
Pundits were quick to tell Pablo that, just like Flounder in “Animal
House”, he fucked up: “Pablo! You dumb-ass! Now you’re going to
have to compete with your Granddaddy!” But Pablo’s a shrewd dude
who made the right choice. Yep, Bob wrote some cool tunes a few
thousand years ago – about the same time as that Shakespeare dude
– and yes, Bob recently got one of those Nobel Prize thingies in the
literature category for his song lyrics.
Yet we all know, as white-boy quasi-rapper Beck pontificated way
back in 1996, hip-hop is “where it’s at.” It’s no news flash that this
is still true 23 years later: In just the time it’s taken you to read this
column so far, there have been 63,477 folks – Tibetan rickshaw
drivers, Madagascar lemur herders, Norwegian ski jumpers,
Mayan shamans and three sexagenarian Wall Street bankers –
who have downloaded some beats, picked up a microphone
and entered the rap game. During that same time, 18 more
septuagenarian folk-rockers have passed away, bringing
their endangered species down to just 123 left in the world.
Pablo Dylan faces far less competition to get his music
heard in the folk-rock genre.
And how was I able to compile such accurate statistics
on the popularity of today’s music genres? I’ve been
conducting a scientific poll for the past few decades:
Whenever I’m driving and stop at a red light, I roll
down my windows and check out whatever sounds
are spewing from the cars around me. The last time
I heard an ass-ripping rock guitar riff was Oct. 23,
2003 – Led Zep’s “Out on the Tiles” it was, blasted
by a 1970s hippie (as opposed to the ’60s variety).
I’m not saying that Cage the Elephant, the Black
Keys and other modern rock bands are not
creating worthy music. I’m just saying hip-hop is
the 800-pound gorilla – yes, that gorilla that sits
anywhere he damn well pleases.
Which is why the country powers shit their pants when they heard
Lil Nas X – a black guy, by the way -- drawlin’ about saddling up
his horse and then proclaiming “Can’t nobody tell me nothin’ ” over
a molasses-like banjo and beats. It’s one thing to have white-guy
hick-hop artists such as Colt Ford and Bubba Sparxxx sniff around
the fringes – the outer, outer fringes – of Garth Brooks-ian country.
It’s one thing to allow tame quasi-rapper Cowboy Troy, an
African-American, closer to the fold --
after all, even old-school country had its
Charley Pride. It’s one thing for Nelly to
“Cruise” with Florida Georgia Line.
Meanwhile, underground, West Virginia
redneck rapper Mini Thin and his video
“City Bitch,” with its white girls twerkin’
in Confederate-flag bikinis, will never
be allowed within a thousand miles of
Nashville’s country club.
But Lil Nas X had the audacity to craft a catchy
track that name-checks tractors, cowboy hats
and Wrangler jeans over a slow-brewed, downhome,
sittin’-on-the-back-porch groove – a chill hiphop
successor to Charlie Daniels’ “Long-Haired Country
Boy.” Both Charlie and Nas X have the same philosophy: “You
don’t like the way I’m livin’, just leave this country boy alone.”
Yet the country music mafia, Billboard and-or some other deepstate
Nashville operative booted Lil Nas X and his hit ditty off the
country charts.
The go-to theory is that country music – a staunchly conservative,
traditionalist genre that’s still even a bit leery about the bombast
of white-boy “bro country” – can tolerate only so much outsider
incursions: “OK, we’ll let Nelly hop on the bus to Nashville this
time.” But you can just hear those Nashville fat cats thinking:
“However, if we allow the virus of hip-hop in the door too often,
soon it’ll infect the entire industry! Look at the pop charts! It’s
all rap!”
Still, you gotta wonder if all the melanin in the skin of Lil Nas
X had something to do with it – if this incident is a racial
matter because, well, race matters, in a negative way, to
some folks.
There’s a grim joke somewhere in the Lil Nas X saga,
and its punchline is Public Enemy’s “Leave This Off
Your Fuckin’ Charts” from their 1990 masterpiece,
“Fear of a Black Planet.” As soon as I find that joke,
I’ll get back.
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