Check out this video of Jimmy Fallon and (sigh!) Justin Timberlake performing a medley entitled, “The History of Rap.” That means RAPPING is involved. And for what it is, it’s entertaining… but STILL! White guys! Karaoke rapping?

Well, what say you?

Bang bang, choo-choo train, let me see you shake that thang. Wm. Steven Humphrey is the editor-in-chief of the Portland Mercury and has held the job since 2000. (So don’t get any funny ideas.)

13 replies on “Competent White Rapping: CONDEMN OR ALLOW?”

  1. If it weren’t for white entertainers appropriating black culture, there would be no pop/rock music and all you dumb-ass hipsters would be stuck listening to Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett and their spawn.

  2. @ Steve R: Fuck the notion that entire genres of music or an entire culture participated in by whites are per se inauthentic just because it borrows and builds on culture created by another skin color.

    As long as they aren’t claiming they created what they are doing from whole cloth (as no artist would ever do), I don’t give a shit where art’s origins lie. The notion that white participation somehow hijacks and truncates another’s culture is fucking ridiculous.

    Also, do you really maintain that Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra’s music weren’t influenced by jazz, among a bunch of other things?

  3. @Steve R: Not to mention the fact that black slaves learned their musical traditions from listening to the white plantation owners singing on their verandas. It’s a fact.

    (totally fucking kidding)

  4. @ Steve R., if I let people with incorrect opinions ruin my day, I wouldn’t be the sunny lil cherub I am IRL.

    In retrospect, that WAS a bit of a freakout.

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