Odd little side debate that has shown up...
Vanilla Ice was a marketing scheme, like having Pat Boone
cover Little Richard songs, in an attempt to make rap
salable to white suburban kids. There was no talent there,
nothing real, and when it turned out that Vanilla Ice's
whole biography was a lie and that he was a rich kid, he
was gone. Vanilla Ice was just a babble, a solo boy band,
a solo N'Sync or Backstreet Boy.
White suburban kids bought rap heavily anyway.
Eminem arose from the very gritty urban streets of Detroit
and reached where he has because of his talent. He is
respected by the African American community because he is
real, because he has worked his way up the ladder because
of his talent. And this is where rap music transcends the
color barrier. And that is why Chris Rock has commented
that the apocalypse is upon us because the world's best
golfer (Tiger Woods) is black and the world's best rapper
(Em) is white. Em has a great following in the African
American community because he has street cred.
It helped of course that Dr Dre was Em's producer and this
was another verification of Em's "street cred", street
credibility, that he was real and not a white kid slumming.
Having Dr. Dre's approval is the ultimate stamp of what is
real. And of course Em being Em, he makes ample reference
to these facts in his song "White America."
"and kids flipped when they knew I was produced by Dre....
Look at these eyes, baby, blue, baby just like yourself,
if they were brown, Shady lose, Shady sits on the shelf...
if I were black, i wouldn't have sold half, I didn't have
to graduate from Lincoln High School to know that..."
In 8 Mile, the Jimmy Rabbit Smith chartacter is mocked for
being white and told he should join Vanilla Ice. But
Rabbit responds with embarcing his poor urban upbringing
("I am trailer trash") and that he is from the streets, and
that his oppoinent, Papa Doc, is really a rich (although)
black kid from Cranbrook (a la di da high school for the
suburban upper crust) and that even Papa Doc's parents were
happily married. The audience instantly goes over to Em's
Rabbit character because he is the one with street cred
(something Vanilla Ice never had ever).
Sounds like a movie, to be sure, but it is based on
reality. There is a division between East Coast rap and
West Coast rap, gansta and thug rap vs hip hop rap, and
right now a lot of the rap groups that have hit in big are
rapping about cars and jewels and mansions. Eminem is
allied with neither coast and keeps his rap, as they say,
real. Which is why rappers like Xzibit, Dre, Naz, Obie
Trice, and others are more than happy to work with white
boy Em, because he is real.
I find myself amazed at how much I know about rap.
By the way, one of the really neat things about 8 Mile is
how whites and blacks interact. In the rap world, it is a
whole differenmt way than in society as a whole. As far as
race relations goes, rappers have it all over the rest of
us.
