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Notes -
Jason Aldean’s Try That In a Small Town has gotten substantial media discussion and has been covered here as well, with one of the themes I see being country, conservative, and small-town defenders noting that the song isn’t actually particularly violent compared to rap. While I think this is obviously true, there’s been something about it that has rubbed me wrong, and I finally put my finger on it while I was running with some country music in my ear from Spotify recommendations. The song that got me thinking for the first verse in Bryan Martin’s Wolves Cry:
Much like the Aldean kerfuffle, one distinguishing feature from rap violence is that there is implied instigation on the part of whoever’s going to be left to lie, but the verse above leaves much less ambiguity about what happens if you cross Martin on his land. Martin’s music has a decent bit of this sort of edge, with Everyone’s an Outlaw clarifying that this isn’t exactly a Back The Blue situation:
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This clearly articulates honor culture values, that you’re morally obligated to do what’s right, including stepping up and killing someone if necessary. These themes aren’t at all uncommon in country music, although they’re usually not as aggressive in the most popular music.
Returning to my point, what I’ve realized bothered me about resorting to comparisons to rap is how whiny, pussified, and self-pitying it sounds to me. While some people did just just reply that honor culture is good, that men should be willing to commit violence against outsiders that wrong them, there was this appeal to how the black people can get away with being tough and cool and they’re way tougher and cooler than country white people, which played into the hands of people that write things like this Rolling Stone article:
For me, this is another example of the woke are more correct than the mainstream. Don’t whine about black music! Respond to this criticism by saying that it’s much easier to appeal to PMC fears of chud expression, that liberals said they favored free speech, and that this is a serious art form that deals with all aspects of human life, including the negatives. Have they ever listened closely to country singers and thought about what it might mean for an artist to give voice to the people that they grew up alongside in the trailer park? It’s doubtful.
I grew up in a rural, heavily white area, and the men I knew from that area really do represent the sort of rugged individualism and willingness to engage in violence embodied in some country music. Some of this spills over into behavior that I’m not personally a fan of, maybe even “toxic masculinity”, but I think it’s a culture that’s worth articulating and defending, not one that can only be defended by way of saying that black culture is worse. Jason Aldean is the light, poppy version of this, but country music really does have a fair bit of violence, and it’s good, actually.
It’s definitely worth noting that dislike of hip hop music might use violent themes as a fig leaf, but in reality mainstream rap music is just incompatible with transmitting cultural conservatism because it tends to push drug use, promiscuity, absentee fatherhood, etc., and that this is almost certainly the actual meat of the objection to hip hop from people like Matt Walsh.
Yeah, mainstream rap has a strong Andrew Tate streak. Hell, it might be even more nakedly Nietzschean (e.g. even "good" rappers like J. Cole who've been in monogamous relationships since college still sell the fantasy of sleeping with and then humiliating women)
I think I'm probably more inclined than most here to see at least some racism or at least partisanship when Shapiro says things like "rap isn't music" but people like him have been pretty consistent in hating things Tate-like behavior even as other "conservatives" embrace him so I have to accept there's at least more to it.
Here's the thing, Tate is very much a forced meme. He's one of those PUA types who gets conflated on purpose with anything and everything on the right in order to tarnish by association. Even on /pol/ one of the most "based" and "red pilled" of all places still allowed on the internet he has been roundly mocked as just a hedonistic degenerate. Shills would post about his latest exploits and tribulations and be met with sneed's seed and feed posts like clockwork.
What, someone forced Shapiro and Tucker Carlson to praise Tate? Someone forced 7,5 million guys to follow him on Twitter? I see myself quite a lot of organic praise for Tate and his exploits from what appear to be right-aligned types all the time. Saying that there's no support for him on the right because /pol sneers at him is like saying that, I dunno, Linkin Park was never popular because trve kvlt metal purists sneered at them for being corporate dreck.
Yes, without actually ever having watched a video featuring him, I've noticed from Youtube recommendations and videos by talking heads that he seems to have basically manipulated the anti-woke countercultural entertainment economy much as he manipulates camgirls, so they end up in a position of either defending decisions at odds with their ostensible values or avoiding responsibility by saying "How did he make me do that?" in a sort of post-orgasmic regret haze.
Since I have noticed the right-wing countercultural entertainment economy get steadily populated by increasingly clueless entrepreneurs looking for easy money since the Gamergate years (e.g. vaguely anti-woke women saying "Wow, I didn't know that video games could have stories!") this didn't surprise me at all. And since the mainstream media seems predominated by the woke equivalents, it really, really didn't surprise me. Where there is facilement de l'argent, there will be facile minds, and it's hardly surprising that someone with pimp skills could "play" them.
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