Music Matters: Asher Roth and Suburban Hip Hop

Asher Roth - Asleep in the Bread Aisle, UniversalMotown
Download Now - I Love College, As I Em, The Lounge

Asher Roth is a pioneer of a new genre of music I'm going to call Suburban Hip Hop.

Hip Hop is highly conscience of place. Which 'hood, city, state, coast an artist comes from is not merely a biographic detail, it defines the essence of that artist. In the same way, Suburban Hip Hop effectiveness will be predicated on how true its artists are to the places they come from. If a Suburban Hip Hopper starts rapping about how hard life was growing up with two loving parents and the best schools in the county, people will surely tune out. But if Suburban Hip Hoppers are honest about the place they came from they will add an interesting and exciting addition to Hip Hop culture.

Suburban Hip Hop is understandably and perhaps necessarily going to be on the defensive against a deluge of haters and skeptics. The classic complaints will be, here's another group of white people who are stealing black music (that they don't understand, by the way), sanitizing it, and getting rich off it. This argument held water in the 1950's when music really was stolen from oppressed groups, but no one can claim that the founders of Hip Hop have not been well compensated for their contribution to the art form. Also, access to Hip Hop in its purest unedited form is widespread and successful, meaning a Sunday-morning-friendly bastardization of rap would be wholly rejected. There is some truth to the claim that a kid growing up in Fairfax doesn't know what it's like for a kid growing up in Southeast DC, but the power of Hip Hop is that it provides a forum for that kid from Southeast to explain where he's coming from in a way that can get that kid from Fairfax to listen.

For a long time that dialogue has been one way, but Asher Roth's new record, Asleep in the Bread Aisle, opens up a channel in the opposite direction. Like a lot of kids from the burbs, Asher is one of three kids from a supportive two parent home who smoked pot, went to college, and has a long term girlfriend. If you are shocked by the fact that after graduating he choose to rap instead of going into investment banking then Suburban Hip Hop is a vital platform for telling us a more about a place we think we understand.

Asher is honest about where he's from which gives a striking credibility to his work. He fell in love with rap when he was a kid and just like a lot of future rappers had a dream to be an MC, worked hard to get there, and has arrived. He laments the inevitable comparisons to that other white rapper that he kind of sounds like, Eminem, but doth strongly protest that while inspired by Slim Shady he is not his clone. After listening to his work I agree that he's not Em, but he's like Em in the fact that he is completely honest about where he's from and who he is.

I believe Asher has paved the way for kids all across the country who bump classic Biggy in their moms' minivan to not apologize for where they are from but to use it as inspiration to achieve any dream they have.

Movie Matters: Star Trek Sneak Peek

A while back Ross Douthat wrote :

"If Star Trek is going to boldly go into the twenty-first century, it needs to consider becoming something a little bit more like the Superman and Batman stories - that is, a pop culture mythology that can be reinterpreted and refashioned every generation or so."

While navigating the mine field of rabid Trekkies who are beholden to the holy canon of the existing Star Trek universe J.J. Abrams has devised a way to create an entertaining, original, yet "in-universe" Star Trek that will be the biggest movie of the year. The crew remains diverse, brilliant, attractive, and lucky. The Enterprise is fast, sleek and graceful under fire. The Romulans are scary and everything is at stake.

In a decade that has brought us a seemingly unending flood or poorly conceived and poorly executed prequels and sequels that sink the franchises we love into the muck of shameless commercialism, Star Trek stems these flood waters of suck. Go see Star Trek and be thankful that the iconic characters we have grown to love will continue to grow with us and continue to make us wish we could make out with a green alien too.

TV Matters: David Shuster Dicks around with the Tea-baggers

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In what has to be the most blatant use of sexual innuendo ever captured on MSNBC David Shuster goes after the Tea Bagging movement with several money (shot) quotes. The writers at Countdown, Shuster was subbing in for an absent Keith Olbermann, have taken the blowjob imagery conjured up by the term "tea-bagging" to new heights. Watch the video and cross reference your dick joke counter with the bold-ed items I've cataloged below (me).

It's going to be tea-bagging day for the Right-wing and they are going nuts for it. Thousands of them whipped out the festivities this weekend. And while the parties are essentially toothless the tea-baggers are full-throated about their goals. They want to give President Obama a strong tongue lashing and lick government spending.

...as well as Washington prostitute patron David Vitter, who has issued statements in support of tea-bagging, but who has publicly stayed tight lipped.

...including Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Both are look forward to an up close and personal taste of tea-bagging themselves...

We can only speculate as to why wide spread teabagging made Cavuto think of the Million Man March, unless he got them confused with Dick Armey. And in Cavuto defense, if you are going to coordinate simultaneous tea-bagging all around the country you're gonna need a Dick Armey.

Twitter Matters: A Conversation about Foursquare

Below is a real life example of how a company can actively participate and manage conversations about its brands via Twitter. Learn more about and follow gnagesh, Goodakm, and Foursquare on Twitter.

gnagesh @foursquare The "Go here, do this" format makes it seem more like it's aimed at tourists. Cities have more than 12 things to do for locals.

Goodakm @gnagesh (mayor of Atlantic Media Co.) I think the #foursquare "badges" feature is antithetical to the effervescent tourist

gnagesh @Goodakm I suppose the badges would help. But not every store/restaurant/location can be boiled down to one tip & some of the tips are wack

Foursquare @gnagesh We're actually building for locals over tourists. Our thinking: Top 12 = encourages curated lists rather than meaningless reviews.

Goodakm @gnagesh that's why there should be a way to see a "top 10" list of things to do at a venue based on pop opinion of #foursquare community

gnagesh @Goodakm I like that, but it depends on @foursquare reaching critical mass first. I'd rather be free to leave a note or pic at a location

gnagesh @Foursquare That supposes people are constantly ranking locations with respect to others. I just want to comment on where I'm at right now.

Goodakm @foursquare have you thought about a #foursquare zeitgeist based "top 10" things to do at a venue?

Foursquare @Goodakm We'd love to do the "zeitgeist for to-dos" thing. Requires a lot of user participation, but that's the direction we're headed.

The above conversation happened within the span on an hour and helps outline the new face of marketing.

First, marketing is real time. Think less, point-of-sale marketing and more point-of-thought marketing. The Foursquare team reached out to customers in a moment when they knew those customers were thinking and talking about their product.

Second, introducing nano-marketing. The web has made it possible for companies to reach out to customers when they are searching for their products, but Twitter allows for another layer of granularity by signaling when a specific person is thinking about a product. This produces a reverse telemarketing experience for customers where at the moment when they are thinking about a product a representative from the company contacts them.

Finally, your best marketing team members don't work for you. In the above example, two customers had a conversation about a product and that conversation was overheard by everyone who's following them on Twitter. Foursquare chimed into this conversation which basically anointed the tweeting customers as valid spokespersons for their product.

Smart companies will use Twitter and other social media platforms to leverage the natural viral messaging conduits they create to empower existing evangelist, create new evangelist and spread the good news about their products themselves. And not just to the masses, but to the people who already want to be converted.

TV Matters: Shep Smith - "Glenn Beck?"

Shep Smith gives Glenn Beck the credit he's due.

Movie Matters: The Watchman

I wasn't planning on doing a post on The Watchman but then Brian Garback sent me this in an email:

re: watchmen: it took a couple hours to develop all the dark and monstrous characters and in the end i found it hard to empathize with them. unlike batman and harvey dent, the few human emotions they showed were cheapened by their willingness to disregard one other and the rest of humanity, apathetically sleeping around and causing immense collateral damage with little selfless remorse.

Here is my response.

I think the film was first about the dehumanization that accompanies fighting evil. To truly root out evil one has to become the thing that he or she destroys. The film goes one step further to suggest that the only way to really conquer evil is to destroy mankind because mankind is fundamentally evil. This, then, begs the question, why would we want to root out evil if it is in fact essential, or at least part and parcel, to the human condition? Therefore, superheroes, or even average heroes, equipped with powers or the capacity for stepping outside of the human condition and live unaffected by evil are antithetical to human survival.

So what this story finally deals with, and this, I think, makes the graphic novel so important, is why do we need stories about superheroes? I think the answers lies somewhere in our collective idea that if only we could be faster, smarter, stronger, or all powerful we could make all of our problems go away, but when these theories are tested in our imagination, on the pages of comic books, or on the big screen, we are faced with the reality that the solutions to our problems, if there are any, must be found within ourselves.

Movie Matters: Friday the 13th (2009)

I will most likely rent this movie but I really enjoyed Dan Zak's review of the film in the Washington Post.

Money Quote - "If you love America, you will not pay to see [Friday the 13th]."