What Is Hip?
Picked up the new ("Juice") issue of Vibe today, which had two interesting things in it (besides Bobbito’s column which is always interesting; By the way, he should put out a book of all the photos of him with different artists).
1. Jeff Chang is #98 on the Juice list! If my math is correct, that makes him the equivalent of 50 Cent plus two Dave Chappelles…or four Ludacrises and two Kanye Wests. I could do this all day. Actually, that’s probably why I’m not on the list.
2. In a profile by Jamie Katz, Senator Barack Obama makes an intriguing statement about commercial hip-hop: "The underlying values are so square," he says. Since I am not only a b-boy and beat-head, but also in many ways a beatnik, this really got me thinking.
(I am not, however, a beet-nik. I have been able to escape my genetic destiny in at least one area: both of my parents love borsht. I do not. "Come on!" they say, "It’s cold beet soup with sour cream in it! How can you not like it?")
Anyway, along with my beatnik tendencies comes an implicit understanding of the relationship between the terms "hip" and "square". They are not the same as "cool" and "uncool", though many people think they are. The quality of being cool is intrinsic. Hip is processual, although part of the process is to act like it’s not a process. Hipness is a constantly evolving state of knowing, of understanding, of "getting it". One is hip to things: drug slang, musical principles, style, different kinds of social interactions. So being hip in a general sense just means that you’re hip to enough things that, when any given subject comes up, you’re more likely to be hip to it than not.
To be hip is to be someone that understands what’s going on in any given situation.
Square is the opposite of that. Square is someone - or something - that does not understand what’s really going on, although often they think they do. It’s not ignorance per se; squares know information. They just aren’t hip to what the information really means.
There’s another aspect, too, which is that squares choose to be square. They’re people who are willing to forego wisdom and adventure for the comfort of familiar ideas, which is why you don’t have to pity them – it’s their own fault.
The best example of this is an old showbiz anecdote told by Jerry Seinfeld in the documentary "Comedian":
It’s the dead of winter. The members of the Glenn Miller Orchestra are headed for a gig when their bus breaks down. The musicians grab their instruments and, with no other option, begin slogging through the snow. Eventually, they come across a cozy little home. Gazing inside, they watch a family gathered around the dinner table, talking, laughing, reveling in the warmth of each other’s company. Damp and shivering, they stare a little longer at this Norman Rockwell painting come to life, complete with apple-cheeked children, before one turns to the other and says: "How do people live like that?"
That’s a hip attitude.
One other thing: when you play something for Jazz guys and they say it’s hip, they mean that whatever you did was not done in the obvious, "square" way. They mean that it had a little twist to it that showed that you knew what people expected you to do, but you chose to do it differently.
So hip has three elements:
1. knowing what’s really going on
2. knowing different ways to deal with a situation
3. choosing the option that others wouldn’t choose, for the sake of either creativity, risk, adventure, fun or style.
So what the Senator is saying is that commercial hip-hop lacks these qualities. That commercial hip-hop takes the conventional way out, because its practitioners don’t know what’s really going on, and – more to the point – don’t really care. Now that I think about it, he may be right. It may very well be that "hip vs. square" is the distinction I've been looking for...not "mainstream vs. underground", not "authentic vs. inauthentic", not "true school vs. whatever".
Let me put it this way: I can imagine Rakim and Ken Swift and Questlove and Alien Ness and DJ Q-Bert and De La and Afrika Bambaataa looking at that cozy little home and asking "how can people live like that?"
50 Cent and the Game and them? Not so much.
posted by Joe Twist at 9:10 PM
8 Comments:
nice one.
That shit Obama said is SO REAL.
Have you read Leland's book: Hip, A History?
D
i feel you to the utmost;
that being said, why is the term hipster so negative these days? anyone who actually is would never in a blue moon refer to theirself as such. but are those who bestow the label on others merely recognizing (in a 'game recognize game' type of way) their peers, or trying to differentiate their 'hipness' by categorizing/standardizing what was once thought to be hip. because in this case they are up on 1 but not 2 or 3.
Jerry's anecdote is nice and illuminating and all, but I can't help but think that this is coming from a man who lives with his wife and two small children in Long Island...
Wayne - thanks!
Dan – I had meant to read Leland’s book, then totally forgot about it; thanks for reminding me.
Oliver – good point on the “hipster” thing. I never thought about it before, but I think the difference is that the O.G. hipsters went out into the world looking for cool stuff to be hip to (Jazz, Zen, marijuana), while your contemporary, or “Williamsburg” hipsters take stuff that even they don’t really think is that cool and purport to make it cool just by the fact that they’re hip to it (trucker caps, Pabst blue ribbon). In other words, it’s more about exclusivity than learning about new things. One telltale sign – the O.G.’s stayed into whatever they were into for their entire lives; modern hipsters have to move on to the next thing very quickly when other people find out about it, because being an insider is more important than whatever it is that they’re an insider to.
Sara - true, but it's the attitude that counts.
I agree with twist about the current state of hipsters they cling on to anything they hear is new and exclusive and dont take the time to see if it really has substance to it.
As for leland book it was more his opinion about how blacks and whites work off of each other to create new cultural things and make them better. though his opinions on minstrels was as far from enlightened as a person could get who never claim membership to the KLAN.
I've recently been thinking about similar issues with regards to reggaeton, trying to figure out how "being street" is packaged, bought and sold as a symbol of rebelliousness. Rebelliousness from what?
I refer to that Seinfeld quote often, as well as his advice to the young dude about how construction workers et al maintain the discipline to get up and go to work everyday cuz it's their job, and you've gotta try and approach your creative work the same way..
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