I don’t know if Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are as authentic as I think they are. Perhaps they’re not. Sometimes you start thinking that maybe Britney Spears or someone like that who’s doing exactly what they want to do in the way that they best know how is more authentic than any of those people you could mention.
Kanye West apologizes on Leno, performs ‘Run This Town’ with Jay-Z and Rihanna
‘The “Don’t Worry Be Happy” guy plays an audience like a musical instrument at the World Science Festival 2009.’
via The Rumpus
Eminem and Proof freestyling
The trick was that Eminem made the performance of his own pop-cultural role the subject of his music. Instead of music about violence, he made music about our awkward, hypocritical relationship with violence. Instead of music with swear words, he made music about the moralizing around bad language. He summed this up best on ‘The Real Slim Shady,’ where he rapped, ‘Will Smith don’t gotta cuss in his raps to sell records / Well I do, so fuck him and fuck you, too.’
I think music is probably the most directly impactful art form. I mean, it’s the one that, within three minutes, you can find yourself screaming at the top of your lungs and banging your fists. And a novel never does that. A poem can do [it], it’s true. But not quite like that. I mean, certainly you can’t, like, turn up the volume on a poem. A poem is still always going to be a more active experience than listening to music. And there’s something about the passiveness of it that allows for whatever mood you’re in to really enter.
