WHAT THE LITERARY ESTABLISHMENT MUST LEARN FROM HIP-HOP, MUTHAFUCKA: Part IV
The Hip-Hop Business Model.
This is about money. The carefree attitude, the conjunction of the hyperbolic and sincere, the refusal to take on airs or forward an agenda—that’s all relevant. But more than anything, the literary establishment needs to learn how to take the customer into account, how to run a business (no one is asking the poets to fix the economy for a reason). The days of relying on rich patrons are over, and unless you want to write your next short story for the Church, perhaps, you’re going to have to sell yourself. Today’s model: The elder Mr. Carter, Jay-Z. Next Week, the junior, Lil’ Wayne. First off, listen to this song from The Blueprint, “U Don’t Know.” Verse two, below, begins at 1:40. If you want the full lyrics, go here.
I came into this motherfucker a hundred grand strong
Nine to be exact, from grindin’ G-packs
Put this shit in motion; ain’t no rewindin’ me back
Could make 40 off a brick, but one rhyme could beat that
And if somebody would’a told ‘em that Hov’ would sell clothin’
Heh, not in this lifetime, wasn’t in my right mind
That’s another difference that’s between me and them
Heh, I smartened up, opened the market up
One million, two million, three million, four
In eighteen months, eighty million more
Now add that number up with the one I said before
You are now lookin’ at one smart black boy
Momma ain’t raised no fool
Put me anywhere on God’s green earth, I’ll triple my worth
Motherfucker. I—will—not—lose.
Thus Hov’ explicates his business model: Drugs < Rap < Clothing. Okay, so it goes further than that (Basketballs teams, anyone?). The point is, this sort of diversification is part of what makes me really believe him when he says “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.” The other part is that by making his own financial success the content of his art, he effectively conflates the two. He is both a product and a business, a business whose product is a braggadocious attitude represented by the persona that he’s crafted. How do we know it’s a crafted persona? Exhibit A:
“If skills sold, truth be told, I’d probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli. Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense (But I did five Mil), I ain’t been rhyming like Common, since”
Nothing (much) against Talib Kweli. He’s a decent (sub-Jay-Z level) emcee who can be, at times, a bit preachy. The reason he’s not a commercial success is twofold: he tries to sell a message instead of a persona (no one, for better or worse, wants to buy a message that doesn’t lead to wealth); and he’s lyrically uninspiring (he lacks the skills to pay the bills). He countered Jay-Z’s line on his 2004 album with: “if lyrics sold, then truth be told / I’d probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.” (The difference in lyrical dexterity should be obvious). The thing is, lyrics do sell: B.I.G., Jay-Z, and Eminem, for example, are probably the most talented hip-hop lyricists of the last two decades (and I mean more-so than Mos Def or Sage Francis or Aesop Rock, all of whom are talented lyricists). What these ‘underground’ artists lack is a pop sensibility and the ability to turn a persona into a commodity. Let’s talk Lit.
Shakespeare is the classic example of an extremely talented writer with a highly developed pop sensibility (dick jokes, etc.) who made himself a coveted brand, so much so that there were as many bootleg Shakes plays in Elizabethan England as there are Louis Vuitton knockoffs on Canal Street. The same is true of Homer, but we’ve talked about him. Take Hemingway: his success wasn’t only due to his writing ability—it had to do with the image of the grizzled, cigar-smoking, gun-owning, flask-in-the-back-pocket fisherman. Like Jay-Z, Hemingway represented a lifestyle, a persona, a voice (even if this persona was completely uncrafted, as may be the case for codeined-out-of-his-mind Lil’ Wayne).
It’s a bit tricky to import these strategies into the world of literature. After all, hip-hop makes no distinction between art and publicity: every line is a chance to sell more product, every verse is an advertisement for the album (not to mention guest verses, which I’ll discuss in a few weeks). And we don’t want our writers merely repping themselves in their stories and poems. What we do want (and indeed, need), is for our writers to maintain a pop sensibility, to sell a voice instead of a message. I don’t mean to eliminate ‘truth’ and ‘insightful meaning’ in literature, but to move them to the background, to make story-telling and lyricism the prime focus. In an age where print media is dying and there is a plethora of continually updated media, if literature is going to survive, it needs to take the mass audience into account; writers need to think of their art as a business and their voice as a product. And I’m not asking writers to cater to the lowest common denominator and start churning out the next Michelangelo Cipher. Good art is not antonymous with popular entertainment, and if we want to see more good art, our talented artists are going to have to learn how to be talented businessmen. Shakespeare retired near the end of his life to manage petty financial affairs. He knew about C.R.E.A.M.
I know a lot of writers will hate me for saying all of this. And I know there are numerous examples of great authors who could never have existed under these principles (Pynchon, say, if Pynchon is great). But someone’s got to say it. It’s a mistake to think that choosing to write literary fiction or poetry is condemning yourself to obscurity. You’ve got to make yourself be read. Examine what is popular and why, in current writing, and in the culture as a whole. The popular authors who can’t write a compelling sentence to save their lives (the David Baldacci’s and J.K. Rowlings of the world) shouldn’t be the only ones getting a paycheck. The reason they are is because of the misguided idea that good literature is somehow pure and separate from good business. Take a lesson from Hov’ or Shakespeare: Art is serious business, literally.
Next time: Lil’ Wayne and the mix-tape. How Weezy became the best-selling and highest profile rapper of 2008. How this relates to the current division between online and print content.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I think you guys may have a coffee table book in the works. What if you could get this guy http://www.davidlachapelle.com/home.html to team with you guys.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:39 am
You’ve never even read David Baldacci, hater.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The only good about this article is that it is not as stupid as the previous bits about Revolutionary Road.
I have to wonder, is this a serious argument or a joke? Or maybe: a hopeless, poorly read white boy’s attempt at hipness by connecting his bare, condescending idea of hip hop with an imaginary group called the ‘literary establishment’—which apparently consists only of Dave Eggers and Keith Gessen?
Has Mr. Robinson done any serious reading outside of Intro to Literature—if so, why is his range of literary reference limited to T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, Homer, Nabakov, Hemingway, and a few contemporary star authors? I think if you had heard of/read Rabelais, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Robert Coover, or Barry Hannah….I think you would see how easily the supposed dialectic between ‘hyperbole’ and ’sincerity’ collapses.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
yo buster why dont u suck my eggers mtherfcker let the man speak
hey kris robison theres this homeless dued on my street that writes poems about being locked up and sells them for liek 5$ apiece! there tits as f*** man and that dude is rolling in 5s (saw him at the strip club the other day and bi*hes were rubbing all on him even though he smell liek catfish
February 25th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
wat happen to my comment
February 25th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
ps my fav. part of the litrearey establihsmen is that im better looking then all of them
February 25th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
i chalenge anyone to show me a uglier bunch of uglees
February 27th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Buster,
It’s not a serious argument or a joke. It’s a serious joke. Or a light-hearted argument. If that wasn’t obvious to you, then maybe there’s no help for you. If you want to flex your knowledge of backpack rap, try me. Or golden-age hip-hop. Neither of those sub-genres are relevant to this discussion, because they never were and never are going to be culturally dominant capital-creating machines. Soulja Boy, however, could teach aspiring short-story writers a thing or two. It’s not a condescending idea of hip-hop, it’s an analysis of a dominant cultural phenomenon.
As for the “literary establishment,” yes, it is imaginary. It’s also a convenience. I don’t have space or time to talk about every one in the canon (which is also an imaginary convenience). If you would prefer, every time I say the phrase “literary establishment,” you can substitute, in your head, “a fair amount of today’s young writers.” Say it out loud even.
This is about current writers. Writers who have grown up in an irony-laden culture where grappling with sincerity is a real issue. Writers who can’t remember a time when The Simpsons wasn’t on tv. Rabelais: dead 455 years. Saul Bellow: dead 4 years. Norman Mailer: dead 2 years. Robert Coover: dead in ten years, say (age 76). Barry Hannah: we’ll give him another 15. I never said that there weren’t plenty of writers who were exemplars of achieving sincerity and hyperbole simultaneously. There just seems to be a dearth of current generation writers. Rabelais is no different than Homer for the purposes of my argument. Saul Bellow is no different than Vonnegut (Bellow was born earlier!). They’re from a different era, one that doesn’t understand the current sincerity dilemma (were you being sarcastic? I’m not even sure anymore). Give me a list of writers born after 1970.
Besides, man, you sound so angry (Rrhhhgggg!). You gotta know I’m just doing this to get you mad. Don’t play into my game so much, you just prove my point about taking things too seriously.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
puppet mastar!!!
hey i gotta get back to waching supernanny (talking about books=boring as sh**)_ i just wanted to say buster probably fat as stay puft if he cares this much about books and rap so congrats on your diabetes
February 27th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
hey y dont yall moderate my comments faster i feel like i gotta wait like crazy to see wat i wrot show up on the page and my comments are the best hing that ever happen to yall
February 28th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Thanks for your response, Chris, which proves to me that you’re not really interested in the subjects you bring up, and that the whole point of writing this to you was little beyond a funny, provocative headline meant to grab a bunch of web hits. But you should have been prepared for people who would actually read and this and say, WHAAA?
Of course you never really say what exactly Soulja Boy (!) could teach contemporary short fiction writers. It would be helpful for you to actually name such a writer — say, Wells Tower or Jumpa Lahiri just to draw a couple out of a hat — and then examine (analyze) their work and then say how it would or should be different if these writers had taken a page from rap. But you don’t, because you can’t, because you haven’t thought this through at all beyond, ‘hey rap is cool, literature is not!’ And so your article is the “Lollipop” of cultural criticism.
“There just seems to be a dearth of current generation writers.” I dont know what this means. Just a dearth of writers — as in, they don’t exist, or a dearth of writers who ___? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say in that sentence, but I’ll disagree anyway — there is a PLETHORA of current generation writers, in fact, a whole generation’s worth!
One more thing, an opportunity for you to not sound like an amateur. Just to take you up on your offer, here are some fortyish writers who I think need to learn nothing from hip-hop’s commercial goals or in the case of some have already learned enough: Jonathan Lethem, Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon, Chris Bachelder, Ben Lerner, Amy Hempel, Jonathan Franzen, Curtis White, Ben Marcus, Tom Franklin, Sam Pink, Richard Price, Claire Messud, Ian McEwan, George Saunders, Denis Johnson, Lorrie Moore. If you’re familiar with any one of these writers, please choose him or her and then proceed to tell me what he or she can learn from Soulja Boy. I want to know. This was the promise of the article which has yet to be made. Please enlighten us!
March 1st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
holy fuck literary flame war yall throwin bombs like afganistan
March 1st, 2009 at 8:14 pm
hey do yall like maya angelou i saw her on oprah and that b**Ch got some fly ass poems
March 1st, 2009 at 8:26 pm
final comment for the night (got a meeting with my praole officer in the mornign and then i work a shift down at arbys)
hey butser if you like writers so much y dont you go to writerland (wherever they live) and work for them? ill tel you why cause all writers are poor as shit
im rich which means im imporntant and kris robison rich as hell (you can tell b/c of his author foto but writers dont have money ergo no one cares about them erfo they need to score some cheeze like biggie *crosses heart* did kris robison just performing a public service just like if he were mentoring bad kids or feeding homeless veterens
hth bro
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Just wanted to interject that I have recently (in the last six months) discovered that I love Jhumpa Lahiri! And her name has an ‘h’ in it, Buster.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
hey princess gwwenolyn thanks for the info a/s/l?
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Buster,
As I stated in my very first post, the purpose of this enterprise is to examine some “admittedly ridiculous” questions. I have no problem with being completely absurd and completely sincere. If that’s a problem for you, then you haven’t been paying attention.
But to the point. Jonathan Lethem: In Fortress of Solitude, he tries too hard. He piles metaphor on metaphor on metaphor in a list to describe something; it starts to sound contrived. When he stops trying to be a ‘good writer,’ stops inflating his language, and just tells a story, he succeeds, sometimes brilliantly. Or Michael Chabon in Kavalier and Clay. The novel is great for the first 2/3, then begins to falter once the characters grow up and you can feel Chabon willing them towards his final conclusion rather than allowing the story to unfold more organically. It feels rushed. Both of these writers could learn a thing or two from hip-hop: namely, relax, have fun: don’t make the goal of telling an entertaining story subservient to the ‘writerly will to produce great art.’
You seem a bit confused about these two sentences:
“I never said that there weren’t plenty of writers who were exemplars of achieving sincerity and hyperbole simultaneously. There just seems to be a dearth of current generation writers.”
Try reading in context. In your head, add to the end: “…who are exemplars of achieving sincerity and hyperbole simultaneously.”
By the way, half of the writers you mentioned are over 50 (McEwan is 60!) and only three of them are under 40. This article isn’t for McEwan (he doesn’t need it), it’s for my generation, for people like you, who still seem to think in terms of this dichotomy of sincerity vs. absurdity. I hope you’re angry, I mean happy.
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Sharp! I Digg’d it. Keep ‘em comin’!
March 4th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
you stay out of this padlo manrequiz this is b/w kris robison and butser and me
March 4th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
hey i dont know wat dichotomy means but i think kris robison right that books need to be more easier to read or else how can you make them in to movies
one time iw as reading this hardy boys book and i got a headacke (sp?) so bad that i couldnt get it up when my girl came over she thought it was b/c she was a big girl but it was really the headacke that made my boner go awway
March 4th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
but dont tell anyone i coundt get it up i got a rep. to mantain kthx
March 4th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Christopher
Although it’s possible to say that some rap music is characterized by relaxation, fun, and entertaining storytelling, it’s certainly not true of the best rap. This part of your argument is where your ignorance of hip hop is best illustrated. The candy rap of Soulja Boy may be all about relaxation, fun, stupidity, and MySpace videos, but what does any of that have to do with Jay-Z or Kanye West, two nearly joyless auteurs who take their shit very seriously? (Someone “who tries too hard,” who “piles metaphor upon metaphor” sure sounds like a good description of Lil Wayne—but I’ll leave that argument for your next post!) And “entertaining storytelling”? What makes you think clear narrative is a vaunted principle of hip-hop? Ok, “Regulators” tells a great story and is a great song. Ditto Nas’s “One Love.” There are others in addition to these, but these are exceptions to the rule. The narratives in most rap songs are half-assed or unfinished, and I think it’s fairly uncontroversial to say that the success of nearly all rap songs is due more to the lyrical style of the rappers, the song’s underlying message or theme, or the song’s production. Yeah, Ghostface often tells stories in his raps, but who the hell knows what is going on in them? No one would call Ghostface a “good storyteller.” Any Wu-head will tell you that Ghostface is more often celebrated for his nutzo over-the-top literary style, the trait you seem to be disparaging in Chabon and Lethem.
You’re still not getting anywhere with your literary analysis. You say that when Lethem starts “just telling a story, he succeeds”—are you saying you want Lethem to drop all flavor and flair and tell the thing straight, like Dan Brown? If you’re looking for Dan Brown, why don’t you read Dan Brown? And I don’t understand how saying that something is “contrived” goes from objective fact to criticism. What kind of worthwhile writing, or any art for that matter, isn’t brilliantly, obviously contrived? And is there any cheaper, vaguer MFA writers’ workshop quibble than “let your story grow organically”? That’s like saying, “you need to choose your words more naturally” or “this story’s essence is lacking realness” or blah blah blah just say you don’t like it, good grief. This griping is all in addition to the fact that you fail to show how if Lethem had looked to rap as a guide, he might learn to just “tell the story” without unnecessary verbal flourishes or how Chabon might have helped himself let the story “unfold more organically” by bumping some Soulja Boy.
Re: writers under forty, you’re right, a lot of those writers I mentioned were older than I had expected. I didn’t go checking Wikipedias, I just picked writers who were considered to be on the younger side of true geezers like Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy. But look, your article was based on attacking the “literary establishment,” and if you’re talking literary establishment writers who are under the age of forty, you’re going to come up with some seriously slim pickings. As far as I can tell, we’re talking Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers (38!), and (maybe) Jonathan Safran Foer, but definitely not Keith Gessen, who has only written one (poorly reviewed) novel. The rest of us youngins are still in a competition to find out who gets to be attacked with the tag “literary establishment” by the time they’re in the mid-forties. And the mostly anonymous hundreds of writers are the ones I’m defending and with whom you don’t seem that familiar. If you’re looking to make a critique of young writers, ie people fresh out of MFAs who have at most two books published, you should direct your eyes at the pages of chapbooks and internet-only literary magazines, where I think you would learn a lot from a vibrant scene where sincerity and absurdity are swirled together often to beautiful effect and where hip hop is appreciated is a rightful influence-slash-antagonist along with other pop culture media such as television and the movies.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Buster,
I’m the web editor and Vice President at Flatmancrooked. I wrote you an email, but sent it to what may well be a fake email address ([email protected]). Please read that email. Until you respond to it, I will not approve your most recent response to Christopher Robinson’s article. If you have been listing a false email address, please email me, via the about page, so that I have a viable address for you.
Sincerely,
Kaelan Smith
March 5th, 2009 at 7:04 am
i thougt our mail address woundt be publish??? youll be hearing from my lawyer
March 5th, 2009 at 10:29 am
this blows just post his stupid coment already for cr*sts sake
March 5th, 2009 at 11:10 am
cant you see im dyeing here
March 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
holy f**k thats alot of words
March 5th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
cld someone read that and tell me if i should read it too
March 9th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
[...] Part IV: The Hip-Hop Business Model [...]
March 9th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Buster,
“Relaxation, fun, and entertaining story telling” are qualities found in abundance in say, the Notorious B.I.G., Atmosphere, Eminem, Kool G Rap, and Redman. To claim that the best rap is not characterized by these things is simply false. Is it also characterized by other things? Yes. Are there examples of excellent hip-hop without these qualities? Probably. It’s also probably hip-hop I’m not interested in. Even Aesop Rock, at times, or Chuck D, embodies those qualities. And if you think that Jay-Z is a “nearly joyless auteur” then you’re ignoring a large part of his work (e.g. 99 Problems, twenty-two twos).
As for Lil Wayne: he’s an awful rapper. He does pile metaphor upon metaphor without any coherent connection. I never claimed he was talented. As for ‘clear narrative’ being a vaunted principle of hip-hop, you’re right, it’s not-though it’s used to good effect in a lot of rap songs. I more than agree with you that it’s uncontroversial, I think it’s incontrovertible that the success of nearly all rap songs is due to the qualities you list (though I would strike out “underlying message” and replace it with “charisma”).
I am a Wu-head and I agree with you about why Ghostface rules (“speakin’ of the devil psych, no it’s the God, get the shit right / mega trife, and yo I killed you in a past life”). Though I think his narratives on say “Underwater” or “Shakey Dog” are a lot of fun. The point is though, that Ghostface can get away with this “nutzo-over-the-top literary style” because that all he is, for the most part; it doesn’t distract or contort some important narrative because there isn’t one to be distracted from. What this boils down to is that you can’t just analyze things in terms of isolated traits. It’s about the simultaneity of certain traits that form what I’ve been referring to as an “attitude toward the creation of art.” I happen to like Chabon and Lethem, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re perfect.
I’m not asking any writer to drop all the flavor and flair (though it would the story to ‘kill their darlings’). In short, what I’m saying is that entertainment is a noble goal and that all writers could learn from the priority set on entertainment by hip-hop, by the sit-com, or by Shakespeare. Yes, all art is ‘contrived,’ but let’s not mince words: there is a time when the will of the writer to create ‘great art’ overpowers the goal of entertaining the reader (this can be at the level of too many unnecessary similes or at the level of a heavy-handed, message-spawning plot resolution).
Think about the classic rule that to be universal, you have to be local. You can’t will a ‘universal narrative’ into existence. Similarly (I’m contending), one would be better off developing the skills to make great art and then letting it happen (yes, organically) through the process of trying to entertain a reader, rather than trying to write something great with the attention of the reader as an afterthought. This is what I’ve been saying all along: it really comes down to an attitude and placing value on entertainment (which is one of the things that main-stream hip-hop does best).
If you think I’m “attacking” the “literary establishment,” you’re wrong. There’s plenty that I love in the “literary establishment.” If you think I want to critique young writers, you’re wrong. I know there are plenty of young writers out there (guys like Mark Leidner or Gary Shteyngart) who swirl sincerity and absurdity splendidly.
I could have titled the article, “Let’s Examine Hip-Hop and See If There Are Any Interesting Ideas, Structures, Patterns, Models, Etc, That Will Give Us, Possibly, a New Way to Think About Contemporary Literature.” Or maybe just “Hip-hop and Literature?” But I’m also trying to get you mad (I’m giving you all my job descript, / which is to piss critics and pricks off with this). I’m trying to entertain and to grab your attention. I’m just throwing some disparate structures in the wash and waiting to see if they bleed. Maybe the shirt won’t fit, or maybe it will be too ugly to wear, but I’m hoping, in the process, we can all learn something about shirts
March 10th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
i hear that kris robison i like the title you picked b/c of your use of cussing words and also your use of roman numberals
March 11th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Sit-coms? Let’s not bring sit-coms into this, good grief. Next we’ll be reading a multi-part series on what the “literary establishment” can learn from cable news or professional wrestling or internet porn.
A big problem here is your understanding of the world “entertainment.” A lot of people are entertained by great art, by difficult art. And a lot of people are unable to sit through an episode of “According to Jim” without shoving pencils in their eyes. A lot of people love Ghostface and Jay-Z but can’t stand a second of Soulja Boy.
You take “creating entertaining art” to mean caving to the lowest common denonimator of contemporary tastes in order to win the largest audience. Literature, great literature, has never been about that. Sometimes great literature intersects with contemporary tastes, but rarely.