| Opinion > Sing When You're Whinging |
| Written by Ed Whatley |
| Tuesday, 07 September 2010 12:19 |
 Ed
Whatley suggests some of urban music's biggest stars might want to lighten up a bit. Seriously, what are they?
Chilean miners?OK, so everything happens much faster now. Like the smug old Sphinx's riddle, pop stars’ super-speed lifespans crawl in the morning, walk in the afternoon and are hobbling by the evening. But this year something odd - and stomach-turning - happened. The third single from B.o.B’s debut album is a whinge about the pressures of fame. And it's a HIT. A huge, huge hit. B.o.B wants to go back to before rap politicking, before the terrible pressure of, I don't know, wearing nice clothes and being signed and having to compete in a marketplace - the poor love - brought him so much misery. Misery only expressable through a vocal delivered by some whinging corp-alt-rocker, who also seems to unquestioningly agree with B.o.B's need for a "wish right now". Who in the pop-buying public is relating to this good-looking, successful 21-year-old unable to tolerate their lot? Another rapper who will no doubt be trawling through the works of Marx and Engels to see if an alternative society is possible outside of the trap of Capital is Drake. Drake tells us that "He really can't complain/Everything is kosher". But that doesn't explain why he has written a song - a HIT SONG - whose chorus is an atonal drawl about how rubbish it is that he has attained the kind of vapid success he was sure to find in joining a label called Young Money. There are people in Drake's life who weren't there a year ago! Who the fuck are y'all? Why don't you ask them, Drake, instead of sitting in your room with a head full of regret and a heart full of sadness? You enormous nob. Rihanna might have laid the groundwork for this trend. As she stumbles uncomprehendingly from tedious tune to ridiculous outfit, she always does so with a sourpuss face and the voice of a 14-year-old complaining that she doesn't have the best phone like her mate does. Everything sung through the nose, joylessly groaning about her lot. Even on Rude Boy, which should be a paean to big-bits sex, she sounds like she's shouting at her man to hurry up and finish watching the football because her mother's coming over and he needs to set the table. Actually, why am I blaming Rihanna? This is Eminem's fault. All Eminem's fault. Album on album, the swing from 'acceptable whining from a fucked-up genius' to 'Good God, man, put some proper trousers on and stop bleating' got ever more pronounced. Never more so than on the empty drone of Rehab, where he was sad about having got addicted to over-the-counter pills. Christ, Em, at least get hooked on something enjoyable. One of the most gifted rappers in the world now spends his encroaching middle age having a right old moan about everything, making him much, much worse than any of the celebs he sent up in his old role as pop's court jester. Well, not as bad as MJ. We all used to laugh with Eminem. Listen to Not Afraid, and test yourself to see how long you can go without laughing at him. Black pop has always had two pretty powerful drivers: expressing sadness and boasting of success. Even on Syl Johnson's mind-blowing lament Is It Because I'm Black, in the pleading coda, having asked over and over whether his oppression is down to his colour, he still finds time to say that he "wants diamond rings and things - like you do". But straight-up whining hasn't entered the picture until this year. Maybe there's been a black middle class long enough that unfounded complaint has an audience. But I think it's something bigger. I think celebrity is so obviously publicly abased and depressing that people can hear Rihanna's whine-and-groan voice and believe she's got something to be unhappy about. You might be going to Tesco in your PJs to eke out your dole for the week, but at least you're not papped on the way there. You might have spent your last tenner on a pack of lagers to drink yourself into numb oblivion, but at least you don't have to do a meet'n'greet with a weeping competition winner afterwards. Where does this get us, the pop-buying public? Will there be a whining arms-race, where artists compete to make the most unjustified complaint the earliest? Will the X Factor winner's first single go something like "I'll only lose to a Facebook campaign/With my lonely face in the rain/Feeling an unspecified pain"? Will Will.I.Am build a sad emoticon into his already unutterably cuntish name, so he becomes Will.I.Am.Sad? Will mogadon be the next hip drug, and Robert Smith the next hip producer? It's a slippery slope, and we're already on it. I would take some advice from The Eagles' Joe Walsh. Enjoy it first, make half a bill or so, then get all your whinging out in one epic, reggae-tinged rock opera and call it Life's Been Good To Me So Far. "My Maserati does 185/I lost my licence/Now I can't drive." Good on you, Joe. |