25 February 2008

And The Controversial Part Is...?

Erik K. Arnold, perennnial and panglossian apologist for the "cannabis, thizz pills, and top-shelf tequila"-fueled hyphy movement, offers this as one of the reasons the "Get dumb" offshoot of an already fairly moronic and violent Bay Area rap scene has failed to achieve the commercial success once expected of it:

National media made a big fuss over the controversial practice of "ghost-riding the whip" (putting a car in neutral and dancing on its hood or roof while the vehicle kept rolling).
Missing from his SF Weekly article is any explanation of where exactly the "controversy" lies. Is there a significant body of opinion out there in favor of dancing on top of a driverless moving vehicle?

Arnold also recounts how DJs at a local radio station were surrounded and threatened, possibly at gunpoint, by an Oakland group, the Delinquents, and "a large number of thuggy street dudes" because, in the words of one Mr. G-Stack, "They wasn't playing our stuff." Apparently this method of radio promotion is not at all uncommon in the hiphop world, though I must admit it never occurred to me during my own years in the industry when local stations also "wasn't playing our stuff." I think, however, we Lookout pop-punkers might have lacked credibility had we warned them, "It ain't gon' be okay to ride your vans through the 'hood."

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