Hoodie Allen, “Crew Cuts” & The State of White Hip-Pop Posted by Nathan S. on 02/20/13 | Filed under Downloads, Mixtapes, Opinion, Hoodie Allen

I'm sure there's some way to write about Hoodie Allen's new "Crew Cuts" mixtape without launching into a 1000 word dissertation on race and the state of hip-hop in 2013 - I could just post the album art and stream like everyone else - but I just can't do it.

It's hard not to see Hoodie Allen as part of the rise of what Jon Caramanica just labeled the decentralization of hip-hop (see also, Macklemore, Bauer's "Harlem Shake", etc.).

Or to make this shit not sound like a dissertation, there's really no difference between hip-hop and pop anymore. I'm an '80s baby, an early '80s baby nonetheless, which means I grew up in a time when listening to hip-hop, especially if you were white, had to be a deliberate, conscious choice. It was still very much an outsider culture, and the popular opinion was that hip-hop would fade away in a few years like any trend.

But in 2013 hip-hop has seeped into mainstream culture so thoroughly it's become indistinguishable from mainstream culture. Kanye West is one of the the biggest celebrities on the planet, major corporations want Eminem in their commercials and LL Cool J hosts the Grammys. The younger generation has grown up so surrounded by hip-hop that they no longer think of it as something separate; they're listening to Justin Bieber on Beats by Dre headphones, and don't even think of that as particularly remarkable.

We're a long. long way from the South Bronx, and we've gotten there in large part because people like Jay and Dre have worked tirelessly to seamlessly integrate hip-hop with mainstream America (and mainstream America's money).

So it shouldn't be a surprise that all those kids with dreams of music stardom who would have grabbed a guitar twenty years ago now grab a mic, and that their relationship to hip-hop as a culture is often tangential. It's really no different than how the "Harlem Shake"' meme mainstream culture is now obsessed with is only tangentially related to the "real Harlem Shake". Just like a sample on a hip-hop record, the original has been distorted and transformed and copied so many times the connection between the two are blurry at best.

The truth is that "real" and "fake" hip-hop are imaginary terms, the two don't exist in completely separate bubbles. Instead, hip-hop runs across a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum you've got Michael Jackson, on the other you've got Crazy Legs, and there are an almost infinite number points in between.

So I'm not mad at someone for listening to Hoodie Allen any more than I'm mad at someone for listening to Kelly Clarkson, Skrillex or Mumford & Sons. We can't demand that rappers be "real", then hate them for rapping about their real life experiences as white suburban kids. He's got just as much right to rap about his life as Pusha T does. Hoodie Allen's found his lane - a lane that's somewhere between Drake and fun - and he's welcome to it.

Hoodie Allen doesn't need a stamp of approval from some imaginary "real hip-hop" board anymore than hip-hop needs Hoodie Allen to name drop Kool Herc for validation. That's just the state of music in 2013, hip-pop is here to stay, and complaining about as fruitless as moaning about the proliferation of Starbucks, especially at a time when we're experiencing a hip-hop renaissance of sorts (Kendrick, K.R.I.T., Joey Bada$$, etc.).

Or at least that's how I felt until I watched his "Fame Is For Assholes" video:



The first thing I noticed about "FIFA" is that it's essentially a remake of the basketball scenes in "Teen Wolf". But the second thing I noticed is that Hoodie Allen's team is all-white...and the team they're playing is all-black...and the all-white team wins. So...yeah, that's a thing.

I'm sure some people will accuse me of being too focused on race. Those people are idiots. You think the all-white and all-black teams are just a coincidence? Nothing happens by coincidence in videos. They cast certain people in certain roles, set up cameras in a gym for hours and filmed those scenes, sat in front of a computer for days and edited the video, then uploaded that video to YouTube. It's an insult to Hoodie Allen's intelligence to think he's not trying to make a statement with his all-white team.

So the question is, what's that statemen? Is this some sort of "Glory Road" revenge fantasy? A parody or satire of something I can't quite figure out? Yo, is this racist? (The shot when dude's picking out his afro certainly doesn't help.)It's not exactly a stretch to view "FIMA" as a metaphor for white rappers beating black rappers at their own game.

Frankly, I don't have any answers, but I do that no artist, no song, no album, in any genre, exists in a vacuum. In 2013 our lives and the music we listen to are more interconnected than ever. When Kendrick Lamar is rapping over The Frownies samples, determining the point where hip-hop stops and pop starts, where white stops and black starts, may not be possible anymore (if it was ever possible).

Hoodie Allen exemplifies the blurring of these lines as much as anyone I've heard, so when we're listening to "Crew Cuts" we might just be listening to the future of hip-hop. Or the future of hip-hop. Or the future of pop. Or maybe just the future of American music.

I can't really tell the difference. I don't know if there is a difference.

See Also:  Inquiring Minds Wanna Know…Who Is This Hoodie Allen Kid? (Videos)