Mof Gimmers: white man be listening to Lady Gaga like this, black man be listening to Lady Gaga like this

One of the best message board threads I ever read (and if that’s not a thrilling opening to a piece, I don’t know what is) was on the topic of “racial puppetry in right-wing comics”. It discussed how, in American political cartooning, it’s disturbingly common for white, middle-class reactionary cartoonists to put their conservative viewpoints in the mouths of black characters (see Prickly City, Mallard Fillmore and Day By Day for examples). It’s basically a form of inverted strawmanning: you create a fictitious character that agrees with you, and then you blackface him up in order to demonstrate that you, and your made-up advocate, represent The Other. And, boy, was I ever reminded of this concept when I foolishly decided to look at The Quietus today.

Which rap blogger wants to have sex with a 10-year-old girl?

So anyway, in between its usual award-winning mix of K’Naan MP3s and Jewish self-loathing, Hip Hop Is Read recently contained this little post. The “HHH” in question refers to “hot Hebrew honey”, rather than pro-wrestling’s favourite Lemmy fanboy.

Da Capo Best Music Writing 2010

This is from a fucking Official Twitter account, people. That means that an actual PR agent, on around 30k a year, sat down and wrote this.

The entire lyric sheet for “Ready to Die”, as placed through wordle.com

Refuse to believe I’m the only person to have ever had this idea for a cheap filler blog post. Let me know who else has done it and I’ll give credit. Clickthrough for full-size.

Freeway – Freeway’s Beard

I currently have chronic, sleep-disrupting toothache, and resultantly am subsiding entirely on Ibuprofen and Relentless at the moment. This track, and the fact that I was able to finish the Indie’s cryptic crossword on only three hours sleep, are the only things that have provided me with any joy these past 24 hours (“Royal Mail employee showing anxiety after leaving motorway (12)” is a great clue, fwiw).

The Stylus Decade: Stycast 2010

Remember The Stylus Decade? No, me neither. As part of the proceedings, myself and Ferg O’R, who used to do the “Push It To The Limit” stycast, were asked to come together and do a celebratory one-off podcast talking about Stylus’s history, the noughties and music, and the like. Instead we just made a load of rape gags that we then cut out of the final version, but for some reason this still didn’t pass muster with Stylus bigwigs, and so it never was presented to the public. Until now. After the cut, knock yourself out:

The now dead Doug Fieger: not a hip-hop icon

And don’t front like you’re not fucking with “My Sharona”, because the only way someone who wrote a better song will die in 2010 is if Warren Zevon rises from the grave only to be hit by a car immediately afterwards. There’s quite often a schtick amongst rap bloggers for, when a non-rap celebrity passes on, to throw up a few hundred words on said cadaver’s contribution, intended or not, to hip-hop. If you’re really lucky, you can then have your post copied word-for-word by The Guardian. Doug Fieger, while undoubtedly behind an A+ track, didn’t contribute much to rap. But there were two songs he was sampled on…

The ILB potted guide to “The Most Beautiful Girl”

We did one of these before for “Wild World“, and that actually got me my dick sucked of a Vietnamese girl, so fuck it we may as well make these a regular feature. ILB’s back and in full swing, baby…

This one goes out to my man John C Mayer

White guilt rent-a-hack Jessica Hopper needs to weigh in on this whole farrago. And by “weigh in on this whole farrago”, I mean “never write again”. Comments box for Tweedy Bird Loc’s finest hour on Youtube always worth reading, especially for discussions on whether a white person has ever killed another white person (answer: yes but only in jail), and the brief interlude where a Dragonball Z fan starts throwing up gang talk.

Orazio Strano

I promised myself 2010 would be different. It wouldn’t be like previous years, where I just wallowed in old music. No, I’d keep up to date, I’d get my Google Reader game in order and start checking out MP3 blogs again, I’d scour what.cd for bands that had three downloads but an interesting name, I’d start taking attention of hype rappers and scene indie bands and what was at #1 that week. I would again be able to take part in year-end conversations about whether Taylor Swift is good or bad for America, rather than just tossing off a ballot that goes “Yeah, I danced to that Lonely Island track once, fuck it that can go in”. 2010 was going to be a year where I looked to the future. And then Orazio fucking Strano turns up.