Minnie Sota and Wes Consin Hit the Flo

"What a wack song! I turn off the radio whenever it plays. It drives me sick that some artists are killing hip hop." -YouTube user ottycha, in reference to "Low" by Flo Rida (feat. T-Pain).

I finally get sick of T-Pain, surprise surprise. We all got tired of Lil Jon and his skeeting crunk cups, and now we have to take a deep breath and let go of the similarly gold-toothed dreadlocked "T-P" as I have so lovingly referred to him as. His new collaboration with (can you believe it?) Florida-based rapper, uhhhh, Flo Rida is mediocre at best, and yet is still sweeping the nation's pop charts without pause. Its booty beat thrusts in your face at first, but then, along with the high-pitched sequencer and obligatory Jamaican tinge on everyone's accent, it quickly morphs into an all-too-familiar stroll through a forgettable collage of 2007's biggest party songs. Plus this Rida guy's debut album doesn't come out until March, so unless we have an unironic Snakes on a Plane hype ordeal to prepare for, it doesn't look like this single (which is NOT by the mid-90s alt-rock band Cracker) is going away anytime soon.

Now, to address ottycha's concerns. Does this kind of mindless uninspired (this coming from a Sean Kingston fan, mind you) "hip hop" actually do harm to the genre name? Perhaps songs like this and fellow hit monster "Cyclone" by Baby Bash, also featuring our precious T-Pain, are strictly made by people who are film believers in the modicum "music is a business" - a phrase that maddens poor hipsters with guitars and/or backpackers with a lyric book everywhere. Maybe that makes all of these anthems about a woman's curves on the dance floor okay, because they're just trying to make money and have fun doing it. Also, there's the whole angle that people like it, so if you started doing something inane that people liked and paid you for, you would probably keep doing it until someone said, "dude, I'm not going to laugh at your Tom Cruise jokes anymore, so let's pull the cord on that," regardless of how much you actually respected yourself for doing it. Regardless of whether or not T-Pain and his protégés intend on making music for a career or "for art's sake" (whatever that means), it smells like hip hop, tastes like hip hop, and sounds like hip hop, so who's to say that based on success, lyrical content, and overuse of a vocoder that it's not hip hop?

Well, this is all well and good in my head until I realize that I did not grow up with hip hop, unless being intrigued by the cop farce directed by Spike Jonze in the "Sabotage" video counts, and therefore probably cannot feel the ferocity against Flo Rida that ottycha has. So then I think about my roots (ha!) and where that music has gone in Top 40 since I was a wee lad. "Paralyzer" by Finger Eleven, the #2 song on Minnesota's home for Top 40 music to Flo Rida's #1, brought it all together for me. Sure, growing up with Run-DMC and Public Enemy is a lot more easier to romanticize and sympathize with in this day and age of hip hop gone astray, but the fact of the matter is, I grew up with Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots and now we live with Nickelback and Finger Eleven.

That's not fun to ruminate about, so I won't...for too long. But I will ask this: why don't people troll the boards for this video talking about how Finger Eleven is ruining grunge music? I've looked through two pages and can't find one complaint against this cringe-inducing Puddle of Mudd-with-a-dance-beat hit. Possible answers: 1) Because I'm actually not that special and most people that felt that close to Incesticide and Core are now paying no attention to Top 40 and found their comfortable indie niche, whether it be in Mastodon, The Arcade Fire, or Explosions in the Sky. 2) Because "grunge" never meant much to anyone like "hip hop" meant to nearly everyone that embraced it. Well, except that crazy super senior from high school who still just listens to Mudhoney and doesn't really understand what YouTube is. Whatever the answer is, I finally felt for ottycha when I tried to take in the entirety of that Finger Eleven video, which I could not. Regardless of one's reason for making music (no matter how terrible or awesome the music is), it hurts inside to feel a style of mainstream music has gone awry when it was the only thing that made sense to you and your internally chaotic 12-year-old self, no matter what.

P.S. I am still continuing my countdown of the best songs of 2007 here.

This entry was posted by chris, on Thursday, January 24, 2008. You can leave your response.