madness to magnet

besides the subtle to overt use of autotune, what do this:



this:



and this (sorry no official video for this song):



all have in common?

ding ding ding **black men in pain** ding ding ding!


so
i dont know if it's due to the recession
the general hard times
the advent of so-called hipster rap (imo this prob has the most to do with it)

but suddenly it seems like there are all these.....well, maybe not all these
but there are a definite handful of (black male) rappers
who are rhyming about being scared
alone
lonely
lost
vulnerable

who are in other words
subtly challenging
the popular construction of black masculinity
and the historic continuum of "THIS is what a black man IS"


am i the only person who finds this incredibly exciting?

to put it in some sort of context
it's not like there's not a precedent for it
or that kid cudi and co. are the first to rap about, you know, being HUMAN
Black Star (mos def + talib kweli) perfectly captured their pensive mood in the classic Respiration:
"so much on my mind i just can't recline/blasted hole in the night till she bled sunshine"

and way back when the immortal LL Cool J (and i mean that literally, that mf'r hasn't aged a day since 1987) was tellin us I Need Love:
Inside my soul because my soul is cold
one half of me deserves to be this way till I'm old
But the other half needs affection and joy
and the warmth that is created by a girl and a boy


but these newer songs to me seem different because generally speaking
in mainstream hip hop these admissions of vulnerability seem the exception rather than the rule
and space is made for them when they address say, a deceased friend
or in the case of LL, an acceptable longing for the company of a pretty girl

but to rap about alienation and despair that's unrelated to someone dying
(or maybe it is, but not obviously so)
and to be like yeah, this girl hurt me, hurt me real bad
as opposed to, you know, "i fuck em love em leave em cause i dont fuckin need em"
- which we're far more accustomed to -
and not only for one rapper to do that
but for multiple rappers to do that

and, most importantly, for it to be mainstream
(all these songs within the past 6 months have been plastered all over top 40)

something's a-shift here.

(to be cont'd........)