There's this rap group I follow obsessively. They're called Das Racist (pronounced more like that's racist than daas racist) and are comprised of two Indian fellows and one Cuban/German. All American. They're based in BRooklyn. They are niche popular with a small following that is bound to grow in 2011. Most likely their enhanced following will be drawn from members of my own demographic, as in white male middle class college students (WMMCCS). And I feel terrible about it.
Das Racist's music is a lot of things that make it impossible to label. It exists on a basic continuum that runs between two poles: silly / smart. Its most fundamental and appealing quality is its humor. It is through an almost ceaseless barrage of jokes they are able to incite a genuinely unique conversation about race and identity in contemporary America. Most pivotal to the success of these jokes is that they themselves are not white. And this is key to their niche success. They're cool because they're brown.
I went to a Das Racist show in Brooklyn in November with one of my three brown friends and to be honest I felt pretty cool about it. I was genuinely bummed when in the middle of their performance they called out for everyone in the audience who was not white to raise their hands and I couldn't join in. They didn't say brown people or people of color put hands up, their words were "not white." It would have been bad form.
A recent tweet by one of the dudes lamented the fact that brown people couldn't cop tickets to one of their shows because they were eaten up too fast by blog-reading-white-hipsters such as myself. It's not that the members of the group are at all racist towards whites, it's that their popularity exists in a confused space where at times their following undermines the content of the music. They even make note of this paradox in their music which is often hyper-self-aware if not self-mocking.
White people, play this for your black friends/Black people, smack them.
Das Racist's continued success is in total thanks to the internet. They exist almost entirely on the internet and it is here where you'll find their two albums for free download. On the internet you can also watch their interviews, read their reviews, follow them on twitter, and catch them on taste-making blogs. And this is the same model all up-and-coming bands are following these days. Develop an internet presence, translate that to a live presence, and then proceed to live an almost non-stop lifestyle of popularity perpetuation. A lot of bands burn out in Das Racist's current stage: the coolness preceding mainstream. This is the coolness that will guarantee them sold-out small venue shows all across the country, maybe the occasional festival and global concert. It's the type of coolness that will net them mostly college fans who find their niche coolness appealing and in both an effort to be cool themselves and in genuine appreciation of the music they will label themselves "fans." And this limited popularity which allows them to continue to produce their music is largely by the wheels of (white) middle class people like me, people who have similar educations and find their music relevant, good, and important. People who have the time to troll blogs that think the same way they do and live similar lives that they do. (Das Racist is more likely to show up on indie pitchfork-esque music blogs rather than urban hip-hop ones). And again, I feel terrible about it.
But let me back up to "cool-making" and to the point of this post about gentrification of cool. Already I've played my part. In the first paragraph I labeled Das Racist a Brooklyn band. If they were reading this they'd probably think "such like someone living in the east village to label us Brooklyn." And they'd be right. To label them Brooklyn is to impose a set of presumptions onto their music which may or may not be true. At least in New York City, Brooklyn constitutes a series of connotations. Mostly it's considered "cool." Were I lifetime resident of crown heights or fort green I'd be confused and surprised about this. ---What? Brooklyn is cool? Says who?--- Well, says people who don't live in Brooklyn or else haven't lived there for very long. Brooklyn has been culturally gentrified by a mass of mostly white/middle class youth who have prescribed it a series of preconceptions. When my friend who lives in Manhattan rolls his eyes at the suggestion of going to Brooklyn for a concert he does so in response to his distaste at its "hipness." But even in that seemingly antagonistic response to the process of cultural gentrification, he is playing his part, by allowing everyone else's definition of "coolness" to be true and then playing into it. To suggest Brooklyn is any one thing is a dangerous claim that subverts all the people living in Brooklyn who each have their own distinct definition of what the space means to them.
And so by calling Das Racist Brooklyn music I am subjecting them to a definition of cool that is in direct opposition to the spirit of their music. (I'm not even sure they live there) Not only that but I am continuing the process of Brooklyn's cultural gentrification. Already that process is making it harder for people who have always lived in Brooklyn to afford their lifestyle from a year ago as people like myself move in to follow the illustrious cool, to follow the spirit which we assume emanates from bands like Das Racist. And of course the people being pushed out are of color. And without being conscious of it, and not even as a resident of Brooklyn, I am an active gentrifier. If I am not knowingly being racist, I am at least effectually racist.
And so I am a fan and I feel terrible about it. I feel terrible that the "cool-makers" are people like me, white educated blog readers who have the time and means to afford them to leisurely browse the internet. I feel terrible that "coolness" which Das Racist needs in order to continue to produce music has a cost that is practically invisible and at odds with their positive social message.
