9/11 and Its Aftermath in Hip-hop Culture: The Hip-hop Critique of 9/11 and the Bush Administration

They wasn't aimin' at us not at my house They hit The World Trade, The Pentagon And almost got the White House. - Dead Prez The people that's most affected by this war are the so-called hip-hop generation. - Paris September 11, 2001 is a day that will forever live in infamy. Representing the largest attack on American soil in United States history, images of the towers falling reverberated around the world, imbedding themselves in the memories of millions. As Americans searched for answers, their government took bold and decisive action. President George W. Bush declared a war on terror, and began a worldwide manhunt for the perpetrators. The Patriot Act, sanctioned torture and two …

Between Adolescence and Adulthood: How Girls and Toro y Moi Capture Our Awkward 20s

“We were kids acting way too old Hidden somewhere in the back room Now we got it and it's just us Now I, wanna, keep it, forever” - “Day One” from Toro y Moi’s Anything in Return Aaaahhhhhhh the twenties. Looking back, the corresponding victories of your first taste of adulthood can be the sweetest but the failures can also be the most disappointing. Dropping the ball while fumbling through the process of “finding oneself” stings that much more because, well, you haven’t figured it out; to paraphrase Fugazi, you spend your time hoping that every slip’s not a slide. This tension makes Lena Dunham’s Girls exciting. “There’s something thrilling and familiar about …

Angry and Privileged?: The 1980s, Class, and Southern California Hardcore

The final installment in ToM's 1980s hardcore punk retrospective.   In our earlier pieces, ToM discussed San Pedro's The Minutemen, D.C.'s Ian Svenonius, and in late 2012, we examined the "politics" of hardcore and thrash metal in the era of Paul Ryan and the Tea Party. ''My friend Mike used to say it wasn't a good show unless he got kicked in the teeth, because he had braces,'' said Win Vitkowsky in an attempt to convey the intensity of the 2001 Connecticut hardcore scene to the New York Times. “Despite its reputation as a boring but happy place of white-glove politics and private beaches,” Times journalist Paul Zielbauer wrote, “Connecticut has long been fertile ground for an …

Inauthentic Authenticity: Ian Svenonius and the Challenge of Indie Rock Satire in an MP3 World

Saturday night, Washington D.C., a stone’s throw from one of D.C. hardcore’s central nodes and the playground of Nation of Ulysses (NOU) front man Ian Svenonius: the Embassy in Mt. Pleasant.  In the late 1980s and 1990s, Svenonius, NOU, and other D.C. punks used to gather at the Embassy to discuss music, politics, and agit prop, even serving as an ally to the Riot Grrrl movement when Kathleen Hanna and others left Washington for a sojourn to the capital in what for many, became a transformative experience.   Tonight, though, sitting in independent book store Politics and Prose and waiting for Svenonius to appear from on high to assault us with his latest philosophical tract, the shop …

Economic Hardcore: Remembering the Minutemen Nearly 30 Years Later

In 1984, British-born director Alex Cox released the now cult classic Repo Man.  The movie, influenced by punk rock and hardcore, filtered the sensibilities of those musical forms through film, illustrating a stark contrast with the commercialism of early 1980s Reaganite America.  White suburban punk Otto (Emilio Estevez) moves through the city as a newly minted repo man, repossessing vehicles his fellow Angelenos have failed to pay for.  While the movie takes aim at rampant consumerism and pokes fun at the aesthetics and tenets of punk and hardcore, it also left many critics impressed with its fearlessness, as evidenced by Roger Ebert who praised the movie for its unconventional form and …

Tropics of Meta’s Best of 2012

It has been a big year for us at ToM, as we rebooted and redesigned the site back in March and welcomed many new contributors.  (Hi, Jude, Lauren, Maryann, Nick, Adam, John, Jonathyne, & co.)  We were also lucky to see several of our pieces circulated more broadly in the online world, such as Alex’s look at the politics of Atlanta’s Beltline, Ryan’s analysis of sexuality in the films of Wes Anderson, and our roundtable discussion of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.  Meanwhile, the manic, occasionally psychotic antics of the US election cycle prompted both mild laceration from our friend Clement, who covered the presidential conventions and debates, as well as the periodic spike in …

The Joys of Organized Nerd Singing: Best of 2012 Part VI

A capella is having a major pop culture moment right now. A form of singing where the voice is the only instrument, it has burst from the confines of the church to the steps of every college dorm in America.  This is no Gregorian chanting, friends.  This is sassy shimmies and winking wailing of cheesy radio hits, and it’s been showing up on your TV screen in increasing volume. First there was The Warblers of Fox’s Glee, then the NBC reality a capella competition The Sing-Off. On NBC’s The Office, Andy Bernard’s famed college a capella group Here Comes Treble finally made an appearance this year, with special guest Stephen Colbert. And like a musical version of Jennifer Aniston or …

Aimee Mann Is Not Pleased with Your Progress: Best of 2012 Part IV

As part of ToM's Best of 2012 our contributors reflect on books, movies, music, and other pop culture stand-by's that they discovered this year, no matter when their source of inspiration originated.  Click here for parts 1, 2, and 3. Charmer seems like a deliberately inappropriate title for an Aimee Mann album; almost any record from her catalog could just as easily have been called Downer. Mann certainly plays the scold throughout her 2012 offering, in songs such as “Gumby” (“Don’t call me/You should call your daughter”), “Barfly” (“You won’t get high/you’ll only get down”), and “Labrador” (“I come back from more, but you laughed in my face and you rubbed …

Indie Rock Rhyme: A Look Back at the Year in Hip Hop

Tired of these rappers, tired of these jackers Tired of these dances by these fucking backpackers And I'm sick of all these hipsters - A$AP Rocky, “Leaf” When A$AP Rocky released his mix tape in 2011, it became one of the soundtracks for the year. I remember hearing it bumping in DC’s Dupont Circle on the way up to the city’s hippie/hipster/young professional neighborhood Adams Morgan.  For all his apparent disdain for hipsters and backpackers, some of 2012’s best releases seem to be akin to counterparts in indie rock - the very genre A$AP’s Rocky’s villains inhabit.  While not entirely new, hip hop, like indie rock today, increasingly seems to be dividing into …

Requiem for a Heems: An Obit for Das Racist

On Monday, Salon informed the public that one of rap’s most innovative groups had agreed to call it quits. That’s right, Himanshu Suri (Heems) told audience members in Munich on Sunday night that the fat lady had sung. “You guys wanna know the secret?” Heems teased. “Alright, so I’m going to do some Das Racist songs, but Das Racist is breaking up and we’re not a band anymore.” It all started with a massive joke.  Das Racist amassed Internet buzz and notoriety with the 2008 hit “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” in which Heems and Victor Vazquez (Kool AD) shout “I’m at the Pizza Hut!  I’m at the Taco Bell!” over an infectious beat and 80s video game zips …