40 Versions

This is interesting: Jon Caramanica is now the music editor of Vibe. Caramanica reviewed the new Outkast fiasco in XXL; also, he interviewed Bun B for The Believer (a great read). His Pazz & Jop ballot from 2004 lists Cam’ron’s Purple Haze as his favorite album of the year; in 2002 it was Big Moe’s Purple World. Media Bistro’s blurb points out that Caramanica graduated from Harvard in 1997.

Nick Sylvester, the former Village Voice and P’fork scribe who was canned earlier this after trying to develop a new form of journalism, is, I read on Gawker, a recent Harvard graduate. He really liked Tha Carter II. Clipse’s “Zen” was his favorite song of 2005.

In 1988, Dave Mays and Jon Shecter, two Harvard students, started a crude newsletter out of a campus apartment; a decade later it would be the biggest hip-hop magazine in the world.

Here’s where I’m going: is there some kind of correlation between Ivy League education and gully street rap? Why do people who have so clearly (and adamantly) bought into an academic lifestyle based on structure and hierarchy fall for a culture rooted in the anti-establishment?

I think it’s several things. Maybe these people are fascinated with the politics and sociology of a world far removed from their own. The reason mob stories are so popular, for instance. Maybe they’re amused by the antics of people who aren’t as traditionally educated as they are. Maybe, like most arts and entertainment writers, they’re jealous of talents they don’t possess or are unable to pursue — like sports commentators. Or maybe it’s some kind of pity; you know, ”voice of the voiceless.” I am guilty of any number of these approaches.

Keep in mind, I don’t know any of these folks personally, so I’m just guessing at what their true motives are. But with Harvard’s reputation being what it is, you’ve got to wonder what someone’s friends and families think when said person tries to break down the science behind Young Jeezy’s particular brand of coke rap and its potential for self-empowerment in the black community. At least give Mays and Schecter credit for having the foresight to realize the goldmine hip-hop could become. All others: you’ve got some explaining to do.