homeSaturday, 29 November 2008
PopMatters is running a good primer on how country and rap are pretty much the same thing. The article's hook ("the truth is that they have more in common than their devotees are likely to admit") is a little disingenuous to anyone who grew up in areas where all everybody listened to was 1) rap and 2) country, but whatever. Articles need hooks.
Also there is a little bit of salty and unconvincing work toward showing what happens when these genres "collaborate," but it's unconvincing only because it tries to set things up on a good-or-bad scale ("Kid Rock is bad, but Nappy Roots is good!"), when the point is that these collaborations are bound to be wacky and tense, for all the reasons the article does such a good job at listing: economic envy, misogyny, etc.
Plus there's probably some sort of wild-eyed sharecropper/slave thesis to get into, which sounds a little big, right? Anyway, I'm sure somebody's already trotted that one out.
The point is: good work, Juli Thanki!
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