My Philosophy On Watch the Throne and the State of Rap

So Jay-Z and Kanye (along with Diddy) were again announced as the richest dudes in hiphop? Watch the Throne, huh? Isn't "watching the throne" just watching the exploits of the super-rich ruling class all day on TV, ingesting their values through the excretions of an unscrupulous media octopus that's got us all narcoticized in the first place? Shouldn't I be watching the fucking worldwide uprising (happening everywhere right now for different reasons that are actually all the same reasons) instead? That seems far more inspiring to me. So who do you identify with? The "other side," and their fucking trigger-happy frontline shock troops, or the people getting shot, killed, jailed, shamed, and blamed for everything? Rap in general has decided to roll with the winning team, hence its decidedly Republican slant for the last decade plus. "Niggas hate ballers these days," Jay spits. Maybe that's because so many people are starting to wake up to the fact that the real ballers get rich on our sweat and they grow fat sucking at our necks. Just saying.

To say I have a level of antipathy for Watch the Throne is an understatement. Not only are supergroups never that tight, Jay and Ye rapping together is only tight like half the time. When in each other's presence, it's too easy for them to just make overblown Michael Bay epics about nothing, basically just beating each other off with handfuls of crisp hundreds. If you love it, turn it up, but—to paraphrase Morrissey (and the homeboy Eric Grandy)—it says nothing to me about my life.

Far as I can tell, the current narrative in rap (and perhaps all pop music) is all about the all-consuming desire to be famous, as that's the highest order of human experience. There is no love, no self-worth, just the fame (if you're shallow and stupid) and the money (if you're shallow and smart). In case you haven't noticed, artists parroting that mainstream party line in Seattle aren't finding a lot of success here. The folks who want to hear that kind of shit are already programmed to treat it like disposable background music. There's no real support for it here. I think, for reasons specific to our region, far more people want to hear something from the soul, something that speaks to them. (To you, that might mean that Seattle's corny, but to me, that means you're corny.) That doesn't mean you have to be like A, B, or C who might be so-called successful out here, either, you just have to—in my opinion—be speaking something real (even if you're sneaking it in) and not rap "real." Real as in something people can feel in their chest. (Keep in mind there are many types of people, too.) Life doesn't happen in the fucking club. Just about everybody smokes weed and kicks it—look, after a while, nobody cares. Flex! What else you got?