The xx: Hip-Hop Mash-Ups With DMX, Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.

I still show up whenever the term "hipster rap" is invoked on the internet because I wrote a prefix post on it that was linked on the Wikipedia page for "hipster (contemporary subculture)." I thought I was summarizing the complaints, but the internet says I came up with those complaints myself. Nice to have a specialty?

I started hating mash-ups about 10 years ago. Please die. Sometimes it works, usually it doesn't. I like burritos. I like black raspberry ice cream. I do not like black raspberry ice cream in my burritos.

Also, I don't think it's offensive. Just annoying and usually terrible.

Well, for one thing, I question the whole notion that rap music is being "revived" somehow, given that artists like Lil Wayne, Drake, (Jay-Z for that matter) et al dominate the charts. That said, it makes sense for DMX, an increasingly irrelevant MC at this point, to collaborate with upstarts like the XX, as much as it made sense for Muddy Waters (a legend in his own time) to hook up with white psych-guitars players for Electric Mud or for Ike Turner (another legend) to work with Danger Mouse and the Black Keys. Are the latter examples offensive too? Does the troubling appropriation of minority cultures exist? Of course, but your question as it relates to this specific instance is far too broad to delve into one of the most complicated issues in art and culture with any sort of substance. Ya know the Rolling Stones sampled Biz markie on Bridges Babylon, how’s that for cultural appropriation?

I agree with Daba about mash-ups. I hardly ever like them and really cannot stand the whole "irony" of them. If they work to enhance the music, then I dig 'em, but that's it.

I think my biggest issue with mashups like the two above is the contrived "edginess" of it all. This isn't Run-DMC and Aerosmith doing a rap/rock track in 1986--I was born in 1986, Rap music is probably the preeminent pop music of my generation. Mashups like these suggest that hip hop and indie rock are mutually-exclusive ideas and that combining them is somehow shocking. I've been listening to Nas and Biggie and Wu Tang just as long as i've been listening to Pavement; I don't particularly feel that one is more relevant to me than the other. Rockism died in the 90s.

"Revival" definitely seems like the wrong word here. And I agree about "mash-ups" (which can also be a charged word). But I generally don't mind when Biggie's vocals come across my desk, so to speak, whatever the reason.

Nate: I didn't mean revival as rap in a whole so much as revival of specific artists (such as dead ones like Tupac and Biggie). I should have worded that differently.

I've been thinking about this because I work in a night club on the weekends that is full of white people dancing to hip-hop, whic irritates me for a reason that I don't understand. It seems inauthentic, or insensitive, or maybe like an example of the subtle belligerence/douchebaggery that can come from being privileged. But maybe night clubs and music and how it's used aren't supposed to represent authenticity/sensitivity and bringing racial politics into the equation is just a byproduct of my living in San Francisco, the golden world capital of political correctness. I'm not sure.

this isn't DMX working with the XX though. It's just someone mashing the two songs together. I think the XX track could've been remixed with a hip-hop artist, but the above mashups sound thrown together.

Three things: white people have been involved with hip hop from very early on. The Beastie Boys' License to Ill was one of Def Jam's first records ever, 3rd bass had Serch and Pete Nice, (sigh) Vanilla Ice was around, all those cats. The genre's not something that's being discovered and appropriated. The increasing visibility of white people in and around hip hop is, if anything, a sign of black people's decreasing reluctance to accept them. Also, who do you think is buying the records and going to the shows? White folks are keeping the business afloat to a certain extent. I can't complain.
Secondly, it's not fair to assume that hip hop on the whole is borne out of the financially underprivileged. Much of it may pretend to be, but it's really not. A huge portion of the most memorable hip hop of all time has been recorded by the filthy rich. If anything, hip hop itself (i'm speaking primarily of the mainstream) has issues with authenticity, with the "real." It's the only genre that presumes its lyrics to come from experience. But half of the guys talking about this stuff can't possibly be doing it. Who wants to hear millionaires talking about bustin guns and the struggle? Them dudes ain't strugglin! The guys making that crap could buy and sell the moneyed hipster contingent that listens to the music, however ironically they may be enjoying it.
Thirdly, hipster "culture" is about picking over the detritus of the music, clothing, etc. of the last few decades and making some kind of ramshackle, anachronistic life out of all of it. I don't find their interest in hip hop any more meaningful than their unnecessary headbands, ironic mustaches, and vintage print tees.

Ok, but what about the white appropriation of black raspberry ice cream burritos?

Now THAT is a travesty of justice.

I so want to comment on this thread, but the last mash-up I heard was the soundtrack for Judgement Night. Team Estevez!

While we're on the subject of white artists stealing from black artists, how about that Elvis Presley fella. Sounds just like Bo Diddley! There might be something there, y'all!

I quite like mashups. Occasionally one will surface that has some wit and imagination (although nothing will ever quite match Sugababes' "Freak Like Me"). A recent case in point: that excellent Wu-Tang/Beatles mashup.

belligerence/douchebaggery? I find that folks who see things in black and while are rarely perceptive. I have been listening to hip hop since I bought the Stone Cold Rhymin' cassette cause I like it -- I am not in the co-opting business. Some mashups work and some don't, but it is usually the skill of the creator, not the music.

oops -- black and white. there goes that point. . .

Mashups dj's are rising fast. Its the perfect party music if the dj is good. People like it because its all there favorite songs mixed with other songs at the same time. Also its not easy to make a good mashup. It took Milkman, one of the top Mashup dj's right now, 11 months to make a 14 track cd.