Well, congrats, you pulled it off!  You finished this series of essays, spray the champagne!

            Out-dated rap and hip hop references until the very end…  But yes, I’m pretty pleased with finishing up this series.  I guess that only leaves one question unanswered.

Unanswered?   I don’t think there were any yet outstanding questions.  You even had an essay specifically addressing criticisms.  What are you referring to?

            The question is; where do we go next?

Next?  You’re going to keep writing more of these?

            I’m certainly going to keep writing.  But since we’re at a nice end-point, I thought it’d be a good chance to re-evaluate how exactly I’m going about these essays and how to improve them.  Plus, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s the End of the World™, there couldn’t be a better time to write!

You’re thinking of changing things up?  You’re not … getting rid of me, are you?

            Don’t go all sentimental on me, you’re not going anywhere.  But I do think it’s important to look at the content and form of these essays.  That doesn’t mean the earlier ones weren’t working, I think they were, but they can always be improved.  And what better way to investigate that improvement than through an essay itself?  It’s very meta.

Okay, but why an essay?  Wouldn’t it be better to just figure this out and incorporate it into the next essay?

            Well, I think it’s a nice book-end to this series, one that I’ve characterized since the beginning as a bit of an experiment or first attempt.  So ending with a “What worked and what next?” is probably appropriate.  Beyond that, I do have some relevant media I think can be analysed alongside this reflection.  In fitting form (seeing as my first essay was on Ashnikko), I want to look at three different musical artists: Killer Mike, Lil Ugly Mane, and Salvatore Ganacci.

A rapper and social activist you ironically described as your dad, a camera-shy artist who doesn’t give interviews, and a Bosnian-born Swedish DJ.  You’re making life difficult for me once again.

         Until the very end.

Alright then, hit me with it one more time.  What’s your take?

            We generally think of the essay as the quintessential example of a critical medium.  Etymologically, essay derives from the French “to try”, to try and put one’s thoughts into words, to try and make the case.  However, critique is not limited to the essay and, in fact,  I would claim that all media is, in some sense, critical.  This remains true regardless of whether the artist intends for this to be the case.  By analysing artists with three distinctive approaches to the question of critique, we can draw out some general principles regarding media and message.  Specifically, in these three artists I find different answers to what I will term the Call to Meaning.  And by analysing these three artists, this same lens can be used to both understand and improve how we approach the critical essay.

Interesting, okay, tell me a bit about Killer Mike.

            Killer Mike, Michael Render’s stage name, is an Atlanta-born rapper and outspoken social activist.  In 2013, he and Brooklynite El-P founded the group Run the Jewels which has gone on to release four albums (all self-titled).  While I enjoyed all four albums (mirroring their critical acclaim), I personally think Run the Jewels 2 and RTJ4 to be the strongest of their discography.  And Killer Mike’s social work is no mere pastime, he is a committed and successful activist.  He is outspoken on issues of racial justice, endorsed and campaigned for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, and gave a moving speech in Atlanta after George Floyd’s death.  So big is his influence that he showed up in the infamous Podesta emails, where Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta wrote “I guess Killer Mike didn’t get the message” following his endorsement of Sanders.  Naturally, Killer Mike went on to sell shirts with exactly that slogan.

Okay, interesting.  But rap and hip hop aren’t exactly strangers to political commentary.  A certain N.W.A. anthem comes to mind…

            True, Killer Mike certainly didn’t invent political rap, but he does represent one of the most influential political rap artists today.  And as a genre pioneered by Black Americans, certain political questions are going to be broached more frequently.  These include police brutality, systemic racism, and poverty to name a few, topics covered extensively through the Run the Jewels discography.  What I think is quite unique about Run the Jewels is its broaching of other topics not common to rap, including (but not limited to):

• Prison strikes and prisoner rights
  • Close your Eyes (and Count to Fuck) from Run the Jewels 2
• Anarchism and critique of the state
  • walking in the snow from RTJ4
• Left-wing revolutionary groups
  • Lie, Cheat, Steal from Run the Jewels 2
• Non-traditional female sex roles
  • Love Again (Akinyele Back) from Run the Jewels 2
• Critique of organized religion
  • Angel Duster from Run the Jewels 2
  • walking in the snow from RTJ4
• Sex work decriminalization and sex worker unionization
  • the ground below from RTJ4
• Environmentalism and global warming
  • holy calamafuck from RTJ4

Run the Jewels cover these topics, and others, in greater or lesser depth.  But one of the things I think I find most interesting is that both rappers (though I’ll focus on Killer Mike) display a very progressive, non-toxic masculinity.

You’ve mentioned toxic masculinity before; something folks on the right wing of the political spectrum seem to be infuriated by.  Can you explain what you mean by that?

            Yeah, and I’m glad you brought up the reaction of many rightists to this idea.  Toxic masculinity is the idea that there are certain aspects (or to use Butler’s terminology, performances) of masculinity that are harmful for both men and the people around them.  For a simple example, consider that heavy drinking is considered masculine and that this fact incentivizes and normalizes men drinking heavily.  The health consequences of this are easy to imagine and borne out in the higher rates of alcoholism among men.  Similarly, it is considered masculine to be stoic, to not express your feelings (with the exception perhaps of anger).  But as we know, bottling up your emotions has significant consequences for mental health and is certainly a factor in the three to four-times higher suicide rate among men compared to women.  That is, these performances of masculinity are bad for the man performing them and those around them.  What toxic masculinity is not, however, is the claim that “all masculine behaviours are toxic”.  Toxic masculinity simply refers to those specific performances of masculinity that have tangible, negative impacts.

            So when I say Killer Mike displays a non-toxic masculinity, I mean to say he performs a version of masculinity that doesn’t feature those toxic behaviours.  Let’s consider, for example, the toxic masculine behaviour of policing the behaviour of their partner.  To clarify, this behaviour is toxic because A: it’s an unfair imposition on the partner and B: it induces an anxiety in the man that any ‘incorrect’ behaviour from their partner is a comment on their masculinity.  In Angel Duster Killer Mike refers to how some men want “A whore in a white dress”, while he would want “A wife in a thong”.  That is, Killer Mike is more concerned with the character of his partner (being a wife vs a whore, if said in less than progressive phrasing) than of society’s perception thereof (wearing a white dress or a thong).  This is mirrored in Love Again (Akinyele Back) where Killer Mike, speaking with his partner, says “Oh, you such a dirty girl / The world won’t let you be yourself / I won’t accept nothing else”.  That is, Killer Mike wants his partner to be able to be her true self (in this case in a sexual sense), regardless of the fact that it might be viewed as unacceptable by others. 

At the same time, Killer Mike does show positive evidence of non-toxic masculine behaviours.  For example, protecting those that can’t protect themselves is considered to be masculine, especially when violence is involved.  While there are more examples than I can count in the Run the Jewels discography, you can consider one of Killer Mike’s taglines: “Kill your masters”.  This is, of course, an example of violence directed in a way to protect those that can’t themselves (i.e. the marginalized/oppressed) and a fairly clear example of masculinity that isn’t toxic.

That seems pretty uncontroversial.  Why do folks on the right get in such a tizzy over this?

I’ve had essentially two kinds of experience with trying to explain this concept to people, generally to men on the political right.  The first is of genuine engagement; I refer “toxic masculinity” in conversation, to which they respond that the concept is misandrist.  I respond by explaining the “Toxic masculinity doesn’t say all masculinity is toxic, just certain behaviours” and cite the example of heavy drinking.  After this, they are usually convinced.

            The second reaction people have is a bit more interesting.  They usually have the same  mistaken interpretation of toxic masculinity which I then clarify is a misconception.  I then cite the heavy drinking example, which they both agree is A: toxic and B: associated with masculinity and then explain that this what is meant by “toxic masculinity”.  But rather than accepting this, they respond with something like “That’s not what you really mean.  The left just hate men and masculinity”.  Sometimes, they will substitute “the left” for queer people or feminists, often interchangeably.

Didn’t you just tell them what you mean?  How could that “not really” be what you mean?

            It is an odd reaction.  And while I’m sure there’s some contingent of people who are just being dishonest, this reaction seems very genuine in some folks.  It seems at first glance to be an example of the psychological defence mechanism isolation, first described by Freud.  A psychological defence mechanism is essentially any trick the brain uses to prevent unpleasant thoughts (and the consequent anxiety they induce).  Isolation is a defence mechanism wherein the subject ceases to pursue a logical train of thought to its unpleasant conclusion, commonly through pivoting or thought-terminating clichés.  To illustrate, let’s imagine a scenario where Thought A implies Thought B and that Thought B implies unpleasant Thought C.  A person not employing isolation would naturally progress from A to B to C.  However, a subject employing isolation may begin with A, proceed to B and realize B leads to unpleasant C.  But rather than proceed to C, they instead proceed to the entirely unrelated Thought D.  Simplified, you can think of it this way:

• Non-Isolating Subject: A > B > C
• Isolating Subject: A > B > … > D

So if you attempt to schematize the two situations I described, you’d end up with something like this:

1. Heavy-drinking is a toxic behaviour.
2. Heavy-drinking is considered a masculine behaviour.
3. Toxic masculinity is the idea that some masculine behaviours are toxic.
4. Thought-terminating cliché about the left hating men.

Seeing this, you’d expect a non-isolating subject to, like the first situation I described, proceed something like A + B > C.  But in the second situation, we have A + B > … > D, which looks like a fairly straight-forward example of isolation.  The issue is, I don’t buy it. 

What?  Why?

I just don’t think the idea of toxic masculinity is that anxiety-inducing for the right.  Plenty of rightists will, for example, complain about the expectation of men to be breadwinners (correctly, I might add).  The only difference is that the right sees this arrangement as natural and thus correct.  And if folks on the right don’t find that idea uncomfortable or anxiety-inducing, why would they be engaging in isolation?  The answer, I believe, is made clear in the choice of thought-terminating cliché and the Lacanian principle of saying more than you mean.

“Say more than you mean”, how about you clarify what you mean to say?

            Well, to do that, we have to separate Lacan the linguist from Lacan the psychoanalyst (to the extent that you can).  The claim we “say more than we mean” is linked to the Lacanian axiom “The unconscious is structured like a language”.  The linguistic interpretation of this (in extremely broad strokes) is that every word is defined by its juxtaposition to other words, so our language always ‘says’ or signifies more than we intend.  For example, imagine I say “Pig” in English.  The idea evoked in the listener is a pink, dirty mammal.  This is because “Pink”, “Dirty” and “Mammal” are all associated with the term “Pig” in most Anglophone spheres.  However, if I were to go to another culture and use a different language, perhaps “Pua’a” in Hawaii, the listener may instead think of a brown, delicious game animal.  The claim of Lacan the linguist, then, is that there’s no way to communicate the ‘pure idea’ (or Objet petit a) of pig without also evoking its connotations in the listener, connotations that are different based on language and culture.  You can see a very … high-quality diagram of this idea below.

            What is more relevant to this situation, however, is Lacan the psychoanalyst.  To put it in a way that greatly simplifies Lacan’s thoughts, language production is a process that the unconscious ‘intrudes’ on.  This intrusion, unaware to the subject, leaves a mark on the speech that is interpretable and allows insight to the subject’s mind.  For example, the words “gross”, “disgusting” and “filthy” refer to a lack of cleanliness but have different connotations.  “Gross” has more of a connotation with physical revulsion, “disgusting” has more of a moral connotation while “filthy” has a sort of sexual depravity aspect to it.  So if I were to comment negatively on someone’s cleanliness, my choice between the words “gross”, “disgusting” and “filthy” would reveal unconscious thoughts I hold towards that person.  The choice reveals this despite me not stating (or wanting to state) that belief; thus saying more than I meant.

And how does this relate to your conversations about toxic masculinity?

            When someone responds to toxic masculinity with claims about how the left “just hate men”,  I feel like they’re saying more than they mean.  Just like how word choice between “gross”, “disgusting” and “filthy” is intruded upon by the unconscious, so too is this choice in response.  There’s nothing in the idea of toxic masculinity that makes it inherently leftist, even if it is generally associated with leftism.  You could even conceivably imagine a rightist understanding of toxic masculinity where some masculine behaviours are toxic but “it is what it is”, “boys will be boys”.  Why, then, does opposition to the idea take the form of opposition to the left (and their supposed hatred of masculinity)?  My suspicion is that there something left unsaid.

And what might that be?

            The right-wing political tradition is first and foremost concerned with hierarchy and tradition; they believe that hierarchy is natural and good because of said naturalness.  To the rightist, the power dynamic between groups in different social categories (man vs woman, straight vs queer, white vs black, bourgeoisie vs proletariat) reflects the natural state of things.  The left-wing political tradition, on the other hand, is generally opposed to hierarchy and promotes equality amongst groups in social categories.  But the key part is that that is not how the right sees the left.

What do you mean?

            Operating out of the rightist mindset, calls for egalitarianism by the left read as cynical attempts to flip the hierarchy.  That is, activism for the marginalized isn’t seen as a quest for equality but a cleverly disguised bid for dominance.  You can see this in the infinite variations of rightist slogans like “There is a war on Christmas”, “If there’s gay pride, why isn’t there straight pride?” or “Africa for Africa, Asia for Asians but Europe for everyone?”.  You can see it in claims by former Confederates of carpet-bagging by Northerners.   And we see it in the seemingly non-sequitur response rightists have in response to discussions of toxic masculinity.

The great irony is that this concern about an inverted hierarchy belies the fact that rightists (who are often members of privileged groups) would not want to be treated as the marginalized currently are.  And that’s why these slogans are successful!  They inspire a fear in people that they may become a marginalized group if they don’t continue to marginalize others; a philosophy of “Eat or be eaten”.  To support the left, in this framework, is only furthering one’s own downfall.  And that’s why some rightists have such an intense, irrational reaction to the idea of toxic masculinity despite rationally agreeing; to even entertain an idea associated with the left is to cede ground to the enemy!  This kept in mind, the response to the idea of toxic masculinity of “The left hates men!” makes sense and reveals the mental framework the person is operating within.  Or in Lacanian terms, we see the intrusion of the rightist’s unconscious belief in hierarchy in their language when they use this particular thought-terminating cliché.

Okay, fine, rightists will push back on things that they perceive to be threatening the natural hierarchy.  What does any of this have to do with Killer Mike?

            Killer Mike remains important as a living, breathing refutation of the idea that the left loathes masculinity.  This is a man not only unashamed of his masculinity but often boastful about it.  This fact disturbs the rightist worldview; “Why would this man, Killer Mike, be on the left?  Isn’t that working against his self-interest as a man by supporting the left?”  Killer Mike represents a rightist inconsistency whose most obvious resolution is “Well, I guess the left isn’t against men”.  And that, right there, is exactly why Killer Mike (and other leftists coming from privileged groups) are important to the left; they undermine the rightist worldview by their embrace of and by the left.

            One could reasonably respond by pointing out that, per the rightist worldview, Killer Mike is African American and so he would be working in his self-interest to support the left.  This may be so, but he often directly celebrates his masculinity in his music.  I could write another entire essay just cataloguing and analysing the sheer number of euphemisms he uses for his penis alone!  This embracement of masculinity makes it impossible, within the rightist worldview, to see Killer Mike as simply an African American supporting the left.  His unabashed embrace of masculinity (in a healthy way) forces people to acknowledge him as an African American man.  And this conflicts with a core assumption of the rightist worldview.

Interesting.  But after all this, I’ve gotta say I’m kind of surprised.  Killer Mike’s discography is very direct and unambiguous with its messages, much more so than any media you’ve analysed before.

            Yes, it definitely is.  And that highlights something I’ve been trying to navigate since this project’s inception: how to walk the line between implicit and explicit messages, how explicitly ‘political’ should I be.  Leaving aside the fact that all art is political, I’ve generally avoided being too explicit in my opinions by framing these essays as “just exploring” ideas.

But … aren’t you?

            Well yes, it is true I do like exploring ideas for their own sake.  Working through the logic behind them and trying to apply them to media is a genuinely fun exercise.  But these ideas have real-world consequences behind them beyond mere intellectual exercise.  I’d be doing a disservice to readers if I didn’t clarify what these ideas mean IRL.  But at the same time, if I’m too explicit in what I think the real-world consequences are of an idea, I risk pushing away readers who may balk at my conclusions.  So for the moment, I’m sticking with my guiding philosophy thus far: explaining an idea in as neutral, inoffensive terms as possible while alluding to the real-world consequences in a way that lets them reach my conclusions.  That way, when readers realize implications of an idea, they don’t dismiss it as me trying to push my ideas on them, but see it as an organic realization made on their own.  And that’s why you’re important!  You echo the thoughts of the everyman, the common reaction to these ideas that I too often have at first.

Glad I could be of service, I guess.  And how do you feel this approach has worked?

            Through this first set of essays, I’ve been on both sides of the explicit-vs-implicit messaging.  My first essay on Ashnikko, for example, is one I’d probably say was a little too implicit.  I got across the interesting theoretical components but wasn’t very effective in alluding to their real-world consequences.  On the other hand, I could definitely see the essay on Trump’s postfascism as coming off as too “explicitly political”, though that’s probably par for the course considering the subject.  I started hitting my stride, in this respect, in the Code Geass essay.  In that essay, I talked about Frantz Fanon and his ideas on anticolonial violence (among others).  This is an idea that often ruffles the feathers of centrist-types, often the case when you discuss questions of violence.  And at risk of massaging my own ego, I think I did a decent job of clarifying the idea and alluding to its consequences without coming off as radical.

Well, the analytics generally agree, but you should save the self-congratulations for when this starts to attract a large audience.  Anyways, let’s move on, enough navel-gazing.  Tell me about this Lil Ugly Mane person.

            Travis Miller, better known as Lil Ugly Mane, is a little hard to get information about.  Aside from his numerous different stage names (e.g. Spook Lo, Shawn Kemp, Bedwetter, and many others), Lil Ugly Mane is averse to media attention, having only given a handful of interviews.  Born in Virginia, Lil Ugly Mane’s music is an odd (but much celebrated) combo of Gangsta Rap,  Horrorcore and Lo-fi.  While he’s received much positive coverage in the rap and hip hop world, he’s still a fairly unknown artist to much of the world, certainly an extension of his aversion to media attention.  His two most celebrated albums are wildly different; Mista Thug Isolation and Oblivion Access.  And when I say these two albums could not be further apart, I really, really mean it.

Wow, that’s … uh … quite a difference in tone.

            You’re telling me.  As I’m sure you picked up on, Mista Thug Isolation focuses almost exclusively on common subjects of Gangsta Rap: sex, money, drug and alcohol use, etc.  Its treatment of these subjects is so over the top that it reads more like a parody than anything else.  And to be clear, that isn’t a bad thing!  Mista Thugs Isolation is an extremely fun listen if you don’t take it too seriously!  By contrast, Obivion Access has a much darker tone and comments on very dense subjects, such as the 24-hour news cycle, artificial intelligence, and even Max Stirner’s concept of the Spook.  It is fairly common for artists to switch up themes and styles between projects, like Childish Gambino switching from hip hop to R&B in one of my favourite albums, “Awaken, My Love”.  But the extreme nature of the switch between Mista Thug Isolation and Oblivion Access is hard not to ignore.

So how are you going to analyse this album then?  If the themes are so different between songs, how can you come up with a coherent take?

         Well, early on I had this whole analysis perfectly planned out, only to have to mostly scrap it later.

And that take was?

            Rap and hip hop are genres that, while now globally popular, originated in the African American community.  As such, African American Vernacular English (AAVE for short), a dialect of American English spoken by many African Americans, features heavily in a lot of rap and hip hop.  Think of the Biggie Smalls classic Big Poppa where we see many of the hallmark differences between Standard American English and AAVE.  We see the deletion of copula when Biggie asks “Who they attractin’ with that line”, where Standard American English would phrase this as “Who are they attractin’”.  We also see use of habitual be, the use of “be” to indicate habitual behaviour, when Biggie describes “[People who] think they be mackin’, but they be actin’”.  And there are numerous examples of slang that, though widely used now, originated in AAVE, such as in the line “Straight up honey, really I’m askin’”.

I want to be clear that I’m asking this in good faith and trying not to be insensitive but … isn’t that just incorrect English? 

            You wouldn’t be the first to think this, but that’s a misconception.  AAVE, like any dialect, simply has different vocabulary and grammar from the standard or national version.  Let’s consider the example of French.  Aside from its non-Indo-European languages (such as Basque and Breton), France was home to a huge number of dialects which were mutually intelligible to varying degrees.  For example, Berrichon French and Metropolitan French speakers found each other mostly mutually intelligible, but Picard French and Franco-Provençal speakers understood each other less.  The coexistence of these regional languages was the state of play for much of France’s history until Louis XIII.  Hoping to make his administration more efficient, he created the Académie Française and charged it with creating, regulating and expanding use of a standardized French tongue.  But the Académie Française had a problem: nobody knew what “correct” French looked like.

So how’d they solve it?

            Well, to the surprise of nobody who’s taken How To Not Lose Your Head 101, the Académie Française concluded that the king clearly spoke correct French.  As a result, King Louis XII’s Metropolitan French became the model for Standard French.  Had he been raised to speak Languedocien or Angevin, we would likely consider those to be Standard French.  That is, what we consider Standard French (or English or German or whatever other language) is arbitrary and historically contingent.  You can imagine what a bizarre scene it must have been for these French functionaries.  They’d arrive in some nothing town in Provence or wherever else, royal heraldry and all, and proclaim “You know that language you’ve been speaking for generations?  Yeah, that’s wrong.”  The villagers, who’d probably had little to no interaction with the royal government (save for being pressed into military service), would ask why.  And how else could these functionaries reply than to say “Because we decided it is”.  The patent absurdity of the situation nicely mirrors the AAVE-Standard American English situation, why would one way of speaking English be the correct one, the other incorrect? 

But isn’t AAVE super irregular?  Couldn’t you say that AAVE is ‘worse’ English than standard because of that?

            My guy, have you looked at English?  It’s one of the most irregular languages on the planet!  Even French which (and I cannot emphasize this enough) has an entire government institution dedicated to its maintenance, is highly irregular.  If our only concern with the ‘correctness’ of a language was based on regularity or consistency of grammatical rules, we’d all be speaking Esperanto right now.  Irregular grammar is a beautiful (if deeply frustrating to language students) aspect of many languages and certainly not particular to AAVE.

But isn’t it important to be able to efficiently communicate with each other?  Isn’t that why King Louis XIII called for a Standard French, to increase administrative efficiency?

            Well yes it does help communication to share a language, but AAVE and Standard American English are very mutually intelligible.  And more importantly, this argument can be flipped on its head; we could also call for everyone to speak AAVE in order to increase intelligibility.  The same could be said of Southern American English, Appalachian American English or any other dialect.  But more to the point, attempts to enforce language standardization are often done in a way that punishes minority dialect speakers (sometimes intentionally).  In the case of AAVE, enforcing use of Standard American English and punishing use of AAVE harms speakers for, as we discussed, arbitrary reasons.  As an example, most teachers often lower the grades of essays incorporating AAVE for “incorrect grammar”, leading to decreased educational achievement and the associated downstream effects of AAVE speakers.

Okay, I buy that.  If what’s considered standard is arbitrary, we shouldn’t punish people for using non-standard language, such as AAVE.  Can you tie this back in to Lil Ugly Mane?

            Because of Lil Ugly Mane’s notorious media aversion, I’d not actually seen the guy until I started considering using his music as an object of analysis.  Many of his lyrics carried hallmarks of AAVE, such as use of habitual be in Bitch I’m Lugubrious, “Holla at ya Bitch, she be knowing how my balls taste”.  And so I assumed he was African American, but lo’ and behold, he’s actually white.  “Perfect”, I thought to myself, “This’ll be the perfect time to bring in some of the theory you’ve been reading on nationalism and culture!”  I was going to bring in Steve Lukes’ work Liberals and Cannibals: Implications of Diversity.  In it, he talks about how discourse around culture is often hindered because we talk about cultures like monoliths.  That is, we often say “x culture” as though there’s a clear definition we all agree on.  Lukes argues that cultures are more like open systems, blending and interacting with other cultures in such a way that it’s extremely difficult to delineate what is an aspect of a particular culture.  This is because the boundaries of a culture are sites of contestation from within (i.e. people of X culture arguing what X culture is) and without (i.e. people of Y culture arguing what X culture is).  I was going to relate that to Lil Ugly Mane’s use of habitual be and its relation to AAVE and rap/hip hop culture.  The ultimate questions were going to be “Who, if anyone, defines who can participate in a particular culture and what does ‘participation’ mean?  And how does this relate to the question of cultural appropriation?” 

It was going to be an excellent section, but I had to scrap it.

Why?  That sounds like a perfectly good section.

            Well, the problem is it rested on an assumption.  The assumption going in was that habitual be is unique to AAVE and so Lil Ugly Mane’s use of it is, in turn, use of AAVE.  But as it would turn out, some dialects in the American South (like in Lil Ugly Mane’s native Virginia) use habitual be.  In fact, habitual be is even found in some communities speaking Newfinese or Hiberno-English.  And the relative lack of information on Lil Ugly Mane meant I couldn’t ascertain whether his use of habitual be is him using AAVE or his own dialect.  Womp womp.

Oh, I guess that is disappointing.

            It is, but when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  The experience reminded me of something I’ve struggled with throughout the writing process; balancing research and writing.  Obviously, any time spent writing is time not spent researching and vice-versa.  This poses a problem because more research allows for more accurate and nuanced takes but also means I’m putting out less content.  But at the same time, writing more means I’m not reading theory that could help improve and refine these essays.  In my essay on astrology, I spent ages doing research for it which, while improving the quality, also meant that it took ages for me to finally finish it.  On the other hand, had I not done more research for this essay, I wouldn’t have realized my core misunderstanding about use of habitual be.

Yeah, but that’s a conundrum writers have dealt with forever.  I don’t think there’s a right answer to that question.

            Probably true.  And if I were to more deeply analyse it, I’d probably say–

 Wait, hold on a second.  I’ve just finished listening to the album.  There’s another reason you would have to scrap any analysis of Oblivion Access.

            Ah, so you made it to Intent and Purulent Discharge then?

Yeah.  And after listening to it, you could’ve saved a lot of time and effort if you passed on Lil Ugly Mane.

            Well, I’m not so sure about that.  Let’s consider what goes on in Intent and Purulent Discharge.  It starts with a sample from what I assume to be a mother, asking “That could be our teenager, that could be our kid doing that.  How could that possibly happen?”  This ominous statement is followed by an abstract but deeply spooky beat mixing a low-pitched string instrument (possibly a double-bass) and industrial sounds.  This firmly establishes a sense of unease in the song.  What follows is a harsh tirade by Lil Ugly Mane, in which he says “Painting’s not an art / Art is tricking you with statements that the painter’s painting art / Without an explanation, it’s just pretty little marks”.  Now, I don’t believe Lil Ugly Mane is making a jab at painters or even making a general comment on aesthetics, the philosophy of beauty and art.  Rather, I think this is a commentary on how we consume media.

How so?

            In these lyrics, Lil Ugly Mane differentiates between painting as art and painting as “pretty little marks”.  This begs the question, what makes “pretty little marks” become art?  Well, Lil Ugly Mane says “explanation” is the difference.  But this is no philosophical point he’s making, he’s saying that many people don’t consider something art until some blowhard on the internet writes an essay about it.

So he’s calling you out?  Saying you’re the problem?

            Not exactly.  Lil Ugly Mane says that people “can’t see a bigger picture without a caption / Until some critic go and write it out”, that people essentially outsource the intellectual labour of interpretation to career critics.  So his frustration is more with the listeners unwilling to find their own meaning in the music but take the word of critics as gospel.  He then goes on to mock these kinds of listeners in the chorus, “What’s it all mean? / What’s he saying when he says it? / What’s his underlying topic? / What’s the motive in his message?”.  That is, he’s playing the part of someone who’s begging to have the meaning of Oblivion Access explained to them.  This chorus will then go on to repeat twenty(!) times until the song ends, becoming more distorted and sarcastic each time.  It is interrupted between repetition four and five by the lines “But what if he was bored and there was no between the lines? / It was a way to pass the time, he liked the way it rhymed”.  This line suggests that Lil Ugly Mane believes the earlier songs of Oblivion Access have nothing “between the lines”, that it was devoid of meaning.  This makes Oblivion Access almost an exercise in trolling; “Ha, you thought this had a deep message, but it doesn’t mean anything at all!”  The song ends with another sample, one man asking another if he knows “what the rattling pieces are … some little pieces of barbecue chicken”.  That is, the contents of Oblivion Access are null, a nothing, just “some little pieces of barbecue chicken”.

So, just to clarify, you’re saying it’s a critique of how people consume art; that people simultaneously beg for explanations of art but are unwilling to do the mental labour of interpretation themselves.

            Yes.  And he accomplishes this by putting out an album with a number of songs that seem like perfect fodder for critique and interpretation.  He then pulls the rug out from under us in Intent and Purulent Discharge by claiming the earlier songs had no meaning.

Claim?  It’s his album, I’m pretty sure he knows what it’s about (or not about).

            This is where the concept of Death of the Author comes in handy.  Much less morbid than the term suggests, the idea comes to us from the French literary critic Roland Barthes.  His central claim is that once a work of art enters the public sphere, the author or creator is no longer the arbiter of the work’s meaning.  This is because, through the act of interpretation, people can come to different conclusions about the meaning of a piece that are perfectly valid even if that wasn’t the creator’s intention.  For example, let’s imagine a writer wants to make a film about a breakup he went through and how horrible his girlfriend was to him.  He portrays himself as smart, kind, funny and hard-working while portraying the woman as acting in an arbitrary, spiteful manner.  The writer believes the film is about how horrible this woman (or women generally) was, that bitches be crazy.  But someone else seeing that film could watch it and say “Wow, what a deeply delusional author must have written this.  This is an excellent commentary on how some men use misogynistic explanations for why a relationship ended!”  Who is to say this commenter is wrong?  In fact, it even seems a more coherent, interesting interpretation than that given by the author.  

            So when Lil Ugly Mane suggests that Oblivion Access has no meaning, that he just “liked the way it rhymed”, he’s both correct and incorrect.  It’s true he may have intended Oblivion Access to have no meaning and that he sees no meaning in it.  But he’s incorrect to suggest that, because he doesn’t believe there’s meaning in it, there is no meaning in it.  A consequence of the death of the author are that, as long as someone sees meaning in a work, there is meaning in it.  That’s not to say that all interpretations are equally strong, as some interpretations will be more or less supported by the text, but that there are multiple valid ways to understand a text.

Fair enough.  It’s sort of interesting though, the difference between Killer Mike and Lil Ugly Mane.  Killer Mike states his messages very explicitly, while Lil Ugly Mane denies they exist at all.

You’re right, and I think this represents two different responses to the same phenomena, apophenia.  This psychological phenomenon refers to the human tendency to try and construct patterns out of information.  This makes a great deal of sense from an evolutionary standpoint; you’re unlikely to eat berries from a particular bush if you got sick when you ate them in the past.  Applied to art and culture, apophenia explains our tendency to try and find themes or explanations of works.  Killer Mike and Lil Ugly Mane, like many artists, are clearly aware of this as it influences their approach to art.  Killer Mike, wanting to get his social activist message across, opts for very direct statements of his themes and beliefs, such as “I support the sex workers unionizing their services” in the ground below.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Lil Ugly Mane claiming (if inaccurately) “there’s no between the lines”, that there is no meaning behind Oblivion Access. 

Apophenia is sometimes even relevant to artists outside of the direct consumption of art.  Tyler, the Creator, whose early work often includes references to many anti-social behaviours, is clearly aware of this.  At the beginning of the song Radicals in his album Goblin, Tyler, the Creator starts off with a “Random Disclaimer!”.  In this, he addresses his audience directly, “Hey, don’t do anything that I say in this song, OK? / It’s fucking fiction”.  More than that, “if anything happens, don’t fucking blame me / White America”.  And why does he deliver this disclaimer?  Because he’s concerned about how people may use it as inspiration for the anti-social behaviours he describes and that he feared blowback from “White America”.  And his fears weren’t misplaced!  He was banned from entering both the UK and New Zealand for a number of years because he was considered “a threat to the public order” for his lyrics.

This realization that people are going to take meaning away from art, due to the process of apophenia, is one artists have to grapple with.  I refer to this as the Call to Meaning, the question of how an artist approaches creating art knowing that people will find meaning in it.  It’s a riff on the term Call to Adventure, the part of a traditional hero’s journey that kicks the story into action.  Between Killer Mike and Lil Ugly Mane, we’ve seen two different approaches to the Call to Meaning.  Killer Mike opts to describe his messages very explicitly, a response that is likely to tilt the audience towards his understanding of his work.  On the other hand, Lil Ugly Mane rejects the Call to Meaning by claiming that there is no message behind his work (or at least Oblivion Access).

You just love to create terms, but I do buy it.  If you know people are going to find meaning in your work, you can either accept that or reject that.  You can embrace having a message to your work (like Killer Mike) or try to undermine any potential message (like Lil Ugly Mane).

            Yes, but I don’t think the Call to Meaning is a binary option.  While there may be more ways to approach the Call to Meaning, I can identify at least one more.  And for that, I turn to Salvatore Ganacci and the music video for his song Horse. 

            Salvatore Ganacci, Emir Kobilić’s stage name, is a Swedish DJ born in the former Yugoslavia (what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina).  To not expose my relative lack of knowledge about EDM, I will simply say his music is said to be unique and to not fit neatly within any particular subgenre.  Though globally popular, he recently won an award at the Grammis (the Swedish Grammys), the award for Best Music Video of 2020 for the aforementioned Horse.

Well get on with it then!  What happens in this music video?

            The music video begins by showing us a small cabin, probably somewhere in Europe.  As the beat begins to build, we’re introduced to four people of different ages and backgrounds, all of whom have decidedly neutral expressions.  Immediately following that, we’re introduced to (surprise surprise) four animals: a sheep, a horse, a panda and a lion.  The characters and animals appear paired due to proximity; the middle-aged woman with the sheep, the horse with the middle-aged man, the panda with the young man, and the lion with the older woman.  The beat reaches a crescendo after which, well, I’d do better to show you.

They … start beating up the animals?

            Yes.  The middle-aged woman slams the sheep with the door of the trunk, the older man hits the horse with the cabin door, the older woman punches the lion, and the young man hits the panda over and over with his car.  The repetitive hits are in time to the beat of the music.  It’s absolutely bizarre, but only to become more so.

How even?

            After this, we cut to a warehouse, within which we find circling falcon and Salvatore himself.  The falcon shrieks, waking Salvatore.  He responds by asking “What?”, insinuating Salvatore is able to understand the falcon … for some reason.  Stranger still, there is captioning for Salvatore despite no apparent reason, his diction being clear and the captions not needed for translation.

            Whatever the understanding may have been between the two of them, Salvatore springs to action.  He immediately begins driving a shoe … somewhere.

            Eventually, Salvatore arrives at the cabin.  He gets out of his car shoe and intensely stares at each of the four people while the music crescendos.  This mirrors the crescendo that occurred before these people had started beating up the animals, so I’m sure you can imagine what happened next.

            He metes out the same beating on them that they had given the animals.  After this, Salvatore and the animals get in his shoe and drive off into the sunset.  Fin.

I … I don’t even know what to say.

            Frankly, neither do I.  So let’s try something, let’s switch roles.  What do you think the Horse music video is about?

I’m not sure–

            Come on, give it a shot!

Well, maybe there’s an animal rights angle?

            I see why you might think that, but not really sure about that.  I feel like there would’ve been more focus on the suffering of the animals, rather than the sanitized violence that we saw here.

Maybe it’s going for a modern fairy tale/nursery rhyme thing ?  The shoe evokes the Old Lady in the Shoe … maybe.

            I don’t think so either.  Aside from the human-sized shoe, not much of that tracks with that nursery rhyme.  And while there is a sort of comeuppance for the people who beat up the animals, and that punishment is poetic, the framing doesn’t really feel like it’s a moral condemnation of those people.  What of the title?

Yeah, I was wondering about that.  They obviously feature a horse, so you’d think that maybe it’d be of greater significance than the other animals given the title.  But it seems to just be one animal of a set, not of greater significance.

            Exactly.  If anything, the falcon plays the biggest narrative role of any of the animals here.

Well I don’t know!  It honestly just feels like Salvatore just smashed a bunch of motifs together just to see what kind of message would come out!  It kinda reminds me of Dadaism.

            The student becomes the teacher!

Dadaism is an artistic movement that originated in France just ahead of World War 1.  The movement attempted to create nonsense art, basically art where it would be impossible to find a concrete message or theme.  But because people naturally try and make sense of things, many have a similar reaction to Dadaist art as we had to Horse.  That is, trying (and failing) to find some overarching method.

Well yeah, that’s true …

            But I’m not super sure this is a Dadaist piece.  While it’s certainly true that there isn’t a clear takeaway or theme to the music video, it does seem to vaguely gesture in the direction of one.  Like mentioned, there does seem to be an animal rights thread in it.  There does seem to be a fairy tale/nursery rhyme thread in it.  But it just doesn’t–

Go anywhere with it?

Yeah, exactly.  Almost like Salvatore had a vague idea of what he wanted to thematically gesture at with Horse, but didn’t know how to go about it.  And the attempt to gesture at a message (even if insufficiently developed) means this is not a Dadaist piece.  In my opinion, is another approach to the Call to Meaning!

How so?

            Salvatore Ganacci, like most other artists, is certainly aware that people are going to take meaning away from his music.  And for certain kinds of art, that aspect is important!  But here’s my question, is the Call to Meaning equally important to Salvatore Ganacci as it is Killer Mike or Lil Ugly Mane?  My answer is, probably not!  Salvatore Ganacci makes music with the primary goal of creating a beat to dance to, not to make us consider the grander questions in life.  Few, if any, are going to be pouring over Salvatore’s work in order to find a message that will alter their lives.  As such, the Call to Meaning Is a bit of a whisper for Salvatore; the question of what people take away from his music is simply of less consequence.

            To clarify, this is not a dig at his work.  I really like his music, his music videos (like Boycycle, in which he is a human-motorcycle amalgamation looking for love) and the comedic videos he puts out are both fun and well-done.  There is a tendency to assume that “real art” is that which shakes us to our very core, elucidates a new perspective on important questions, or something to that effect.  But art that satisfies the simple-but-primal wish for a good beat to dance to is important art as well!  But for artists like Salvatore Ganacci, the question of the Call to Meaning is simply not a pressing one due to its comparatively smaller consequences.

            And that’s what I believe is happening in the Horse musc video.  Since the takeaway message is of lesser consequence with Salvatore’s work, there doesn’t have to be a coherent message.  Because of the lower stakes, he is free to simply smash themes and motifs together, safe in the knowledge that his audience isn’t going to be reading too deeply into his work.  And to the extent that people can pull out threads in Horse, great!  All the better.  What’s more important for Salavatore is for the beat to slap, which, to be clear, it does.

So, what are you saying then?  That one should focus on the Call to Meaning when creating art?  Or that it’s relatively unimportant.

            As in everything, there is no simple answer to the question of the Call to Meaning.  For those like Killer Mike with clear messages that they want to get across, it is a question of highest importance.  In fact, for those folks, it is the second most important question (just behind “What is your message?).  And while some artists may resent this fact, like Lil Ugly Mane, nobody can reasonably disagree that people will take something away from art.  For some, this will be of great consequence while for others, like Salvatore Ganacci, it will matter little.  And while we often do not naturally put the critical essay under the category of ‘art’, it does belong there.  As such, the Call to Meaning is something I too have, must and will continue to engage with as I continue to write.  As I continue to consider the form and content of these essays, the Call to Meaning will serve as an important lenses through which I evaluate my work.