Posse Revival: Single Shot Redux
Just one of sixteen shots fired
Why does the press label every other criminal an “aspiring rapper”? In 2007 who isn’t
an aspiring rapper? Every bag boy with an Imic has a mixtape and a Myspace page. If a CEO is stealing from petty cash the headline isn’t Aspiring PGA Golfer Caught in Embezzlement Scandal and I’ve rarely seen Charles Manson billed as Aspiring Singer/Songwriter/Serial Killer in attempt to indict Brian Wilson as a social deviant. And they hung out.
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
“My buddies and me are getting real well known
Yeah, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone”- beach boys i get around
bugliosi was wrong about the beatles connect…..
September 22nd, 2009 at 11:24 pm
“and they hung out”
not only that, Dennis Wilson was hella good friends with dude.
tho tbf I’d bet Manson was like x1000000 more charismatic than your average quote unquote aspiring rapper.
also I bet back in 1969 being an aspiring singer/songwriter was a bit like being an aspiring rapper. white middle class version, but still. social hysteria & all that.
September 22nd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
This piece (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/21/MN6719QAUS.DTL) dispenses with the “aspiring” tag entirely; he’s now actually a “rapper”.
September 22nd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
“tho tbf I’d bet Manson was like x1000000 more charismatic than your average quote unquote aspiring rapper.”
Doubt it
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:15 am
“also I bet back in 1969 being an aspiring singer/songwriter was a bit like being an aspiring rapper.”
Right, except Manson’s musical career was mostly a footnote, not the crux of the story. And even that was mostly because he used his notoriety as platform for self promotion. (A very hip hop move, btw.)
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:11 am
Yeah, social hysteria. And if you can tie it in to race and class, all the better. Like the sister says cogently enough in the sfgate story, her playing Grand Theft Auto isn’t gonna make her run over hookers. Fear drives consumption and keeps people sheep-like, and lets face it keeps people from looking elsewhere, like at people with real power and privilege who operate with impunity. Stic Man on Fox asking why they want him to snitch on the guy on the corner while they don’t snitch on who actually “flooded the hood with rock” [(C) Killer Mike], Dark Alliance, while we’re in the shop, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Jay Elect asking why black figureheads get targeted by law and order but not the military or the administration while of course the VP is shooting a man in the face with his legal gun on his legal pursuit, the nonplussed Cops producer suggesting tentatively in Bowling for Columbine that a white-collar crime show wouldn’t be good TV, and when you get right down to it LA smog may be a bigger killer than any he may catch on film.
Well, either some of that, or else they just wanna provide you with a wider net for rap name of the day. Raymond S. Wank? Really, now?
Manson is a bad example since he’s referred to plenty as an aspiring musician. It’s a handy way to undermine the energy of the sixties counterculture, or make a sociological observation that it affected its optimism.
When talking about the end of that thread of the counterculture, I prefer to go with what Lennon told the Rolling Stone:
“RS: What do you think the effect was of the Beatles on the history of Britain?
JL: I don’t know about the “history”; the people who are in control and in power, and the class system and the whole bullshit bourgeoisie is exactly the same, except there is a lot of fag middle class kids with long, long hair walking around London in trendy clothes, and Kenneth Tynan is making a fortune out of the word “fuck.” Apart from that, nothing happened. We all dressed up, the same bastards are in control, the same people are runnin’ everything. It is exactly the same.
We’ve grown up a little, all of us, there has been a change and we’re all a bit freer and all that, but it’s the same game. Shit, they’re doing exactly the same thing, selling arms to South Africa, killing blacks on the street, people are living in fucking poverty, with rats crawling over them. It just makes you puke, and I woke up to that too.
The dream is over.”
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am
“Manson is a bad example since he’s referred to plenty as an aspiring musician.”
As a cutesy footnote, perhaps. But he was presented as a killer and cult leader first and foremost. The crux of his deviance was placed on his crimes, not his hobbies.
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
“doubt”
than your average one, not than, I dunno, Biggie Smalls or whatever. and tbf I’m sure Manson was also x1000000 more charismatic than your average aspiring singer-songwriter.
@Noz
oh, I agree with you dude. I just mean that, at the time, it wasn’t that far off from demonizing rappers. a subculture being indicted by proxy. the big difference is that it was one, isolated, very extreme incident whereas what you’re talking about is some systemic, racially-laden, etc. bollocks.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:46 am
Bart, you are a cultural Philistine. ,