Empire State Of Mind

By Matt White
Contributing Writer

For the past week I’ve been playing the Jay-Z record “The Blueprint 3.” I haven’t been impressed with rap this much in a long time. For me, as far as rap is concerned the go to guys have always been Ice-T and Schoolly D, and when Jay-Z covered Ice-T’s, “99 Problems” I took notice. In addition to being a great and original cover it was also produced by Rick Rubin (Johnny Cash, Beastie Boys, Neil Diamond, Mick Jagger) and held enough street sense to it to make me really interested in Jay-Z.

The Blueprint 3 is remarkable for a number of reasons, not least because it’s the album where we really see rap, which was once held in regard as a silly trend, mature. The best (and only relevant) Rap has always been fiercely political and gritty. Like the Blues before it and the Jazz that is so ingrained in it (Don’t believe me? listen to any early Ice-T), good Rap combines street sense with innovative production to present living breathing musical graffiti. Jay-Z with The Blueprint 3 has taken Rap into its adulthood.

When Jay-Z raps about helping to boost Obama’s image and helping him gain the white house you know what? That’s not a hollow boast.

For the past twenty years Amerika has struggled with it’s identity as a multi-racial-etc country, in places like the midwest, that struggle has been especially hard (just ask any “Mexican”, African American or Queer) with pop cultural dominance being at the forefront of the salvos on either side. Rap gave marginalized people a voice in the early 80’s. Ice-T, around the time he was a whipping boy for his misunderstood heavy metal song “Cop Killer” was the first rapper to advocate a pro-inclusive-to-gays stance on a rap record. Gradually, Rap became a tangible force throughout all of the USA. An art form that was once decried by white middle America, and even hailed as “anti-family,” has over the past twenty or so years become not just THE musical format for the places that matter in the USA (NYC, LA, DC) it’s also “trickled down” to evoke a white racists’ term, to “middle amerika” and lodged itself into the throat, soul and style of this country as a whole.

I’ve always found it funny that some of my fellow rock musicians still hate Rap but can love Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson or John Lee Hooker. Rap is something that I’d have no idea how to produce, but it’s a cultural force from my home city (NYC) that I respect. The fact that Jay-Z’s “Death of AutoTune” is an attack on the state of music being plastic and stupid (think Lady Gaga, Ke$ha) should actually appeal to the bitter rock musicians (like myself).

For those of you who don’t know know, AutoTune is a tool on most digital recording formats that makes it so that you don’t have to have talent or stones to actually sing. AutoTune does the work for you so you’re pitch perfect (or imperfect) no matter what your level of vocal prowess is. Brittany, Gaga etc all use it.

Jay-Z’s The Blue Print 3 proves one thing loud and clear; that after centuries of being second class citizens, marginalized people who are misunderstood and seen through a jaundiced eye, matter in a big way. They/we are now an important part of the remarkable fabric of this country, which no matter how we vote or whom we proclaim to like or dislike, we love.

I’m a half Spanish-half Native American kid born in Central America and raised in Manhattan NYC by a European-American couple. I’ve had “relationships” or whatever with both genders. I was raised on Classical Music, Folk and Punk and you know what? Jay-Z speaks to me and makes me realize how empowered we can be. Jay-Z is proof that in this country everyone matters. Not just through his music but also through the aftermath of socially important art.

That is the power of American art. I hear from people all the time who say that there is, “nothing to do” in the Midwest. To that I say that you don’t have to be from NYC to have an Empire State Of Mind. You can matter. That’s what Rap and all good music tells us. So listen…and then build a city of your own.

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