Just chilling to some tunes

Now, look, I don’t really have any intention to make this blog about music, but I love art and culture and to ignore my current “can’t- stop- pressing- the- reply- button” obsessions would be ill considered, now wouldn’t it. So here are two songs that I can’t get off the repeat.

I love rap. I know the hipsters of Sydney might shoot me down for this, but I really love hip hop culture. I am fully aware of the fact that the manifestations of hip hop culture contribute and reinforce some pretty horrible hierarchies and stereotypes surrounding sex and race. However the developments of hip hop music, namely on the streets of New York, represent a counter culture that addresses and critiques the hegemonic state of affairs that privilege the rich, white, male. I will write more on this in later posts, because the types of music and the types of art that have been and are being created within the hip hop sphere is really exciting and interesting.

Having been working on a lot of feminist writing pieces for my studies, I could spend a long time talking about how hip hop culture has constructed certain types of masculinity and femininity, that are reflexive of the highly racialised and sexualised climate, but I’ll save you all a year of reading, and myself from just thinking about all of it and not posting so please excuse the quick brush over!

Now you wouldn’t be entirely wrong in saying that this track wouldn’t kill without it’s sample, but if you listen to her distinct sound and watch the incredibly stylised film clip, you’ll see that this girl is brilliant. Iggy Azalea. Iggy Azalea. Iggy Azalea, I’m really just enjoying her name to be honest.

She has mentioned in interviews that she hates the continual references to her ‘whiteness’ and womanhood, but I think the girl needs to own these identities because it’s what makes her whole persona so subversive. She is a young, white, blonde haired, Australian, rapper and really is the antithesis of the typical characterisations found in hip hop culture. Hip hop has worked off, and reinforced traditional gender roles and ideas about what men and women are and what they should do, and much of these constructs characterise an aggressive, pimp like, bravado masculinity whereas women are depicted at their sexual disposal. The large exclusion of women in rap, outside of this traditional eye candy hooker image demonstrates the, quite frankly, misogynistic climate of hip hop culture.

 Sooooo when we have someone like Iggy come along and drop this bomb of a beat, yeah she is completely aligning herself with this masculine idea of what it means to be a rapper; she is tough, aggressive and in your face, but ultimately she’s a woman, a white woman, and doesn’t fit within these assumed boundaries of hip hop.  This fact is the exciting thing about what she is doing, she’s breaking these rules about what hip hop has to be and do for woman, and as a lover of rap, that is so exciting! Go girl!

And this film clip is actually amazing! Check it out below but her clothing here kills. The mesh, 80’s references and graffiti cheerleader, the asesthics combine this strange masculine attitude and ultra feminine babe. It’s this clash of roles and identities that is most powerful, so hopefully Iggy is going to storm the industry and carve is up a bit.

My World. Iggy Azalea.

            The other song I can’t stop playing: the Drake remix of SBTRKT ft Little Dragon, “Wildfire”. Ok seriously, the original is amazing, but having that little bit of Drake rap at the front just makes the song so much cooler. SBTRKT, who basically is a London DJ, (yeah he composes and mixes and produces and all that, but for all intensive purposes let’s call him a DJ) is kind of fucking amazing. His name, pronounced ‘subtract’ is all about anonymity and bringing back the music to the music and not all this hype about fame and everything of the DJ. Quality shit. I love that and think that’s really cool and obviously a lot of DJ’s are into that right now i.e Bloody Beetroots and all that but most people seem to not know SBTRKT so here he is! I also love the fact he always wears these amazing African masks, there is something very modernist about it and it just reminds me of the whole cubist movement and Picasso’s paintings, especially this very famous one! 

Just listen!

SBTRKT Wildfire drake remix

yay!