Objectify This

The new year is here, and with it, new questions.  The New York Times wondered what it would mean if we aren’t calculating horoscopes correctly; Information is Beautiful explored what it would mean if we were; McSweeney’s Internet Tendency asked why comic sans can’t get any respect.

I wonder what it would be like to have video game skillz. It’s not Barcade that’s got me wondering; it’s Who’s That Brooown!, Das Racist’s hilariously low-fi html video game, with six levels of getting Kool A.D. and Hima from Queens to Williamsburg on their hunt for Heems, the group’s hypeman. On the way, the intrepid duo must dodge obstacles absurd and mundane, battling racism from the whites and pinks and dodging traditional tokens of interest with casual aplomb: nah though, nucca. Sarah Palin makes an appearance in front of a crowd bearing illiterate signs — I don’t want to give too much away, so obey DR’s command to “Check it! Hoverboards!” and then read the rest of this post.

Das Racist (Himanshu Suri and Victor Vasquez) have battled the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere- Jones and Farley Katz at predicting the death of hip-hop and cartooning, respectively. Das Racist’s genius lies in their refusal to distinguish between their public and private selves, in their refusal to bullshit. Hip-hop has long been the ideal medium for populist dissidence: it reaches the booty politic, offering it the joy of the perfect beat and a larger identity, a recognition that the personal is political.

While Das Racist’s form is the traditional boom-bap, borrowing from cult figures — as they put it, they

took a lot of samples out
you don’t want to hear those
made a lot of weird raps
you don’t want to hear those.

Nah, though, nucca. It is actually that weird shit that we came to hear. We came because you call your tracks “neo-rap.” We came to hear you mention plus size models, weed, Nancy Reagan in a fancy pantsuit, and kombucha: “a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.” There aren’t enough people telling it like it is in popular music; hip-hop is too often the story of the “authentic” prodigy, self-made or corporate, while mainstream “indie” jams aspire to be some kind of wildly original high art which ultimately falls short of poetry as its artifice prevails.

It’s only in Das Racist where we get

Catch me in my borough chasing breezes with queens
Squeezes with dreams
Do you? I’mma do me
Catch me in my borough, burnin’ Ls, reading Rumi.

Here’s the cavalier union of high and low culture, not some pledge to be only one or the other:

Ek shaneesh, Cheech
Eddie Said speaks, sheesh
(Yeah, that’s what Ed said)
people follow like Deadheads

That’s right. Even Edward Said is so much PC bullshit indoctrination to Das Racist, who refer to people in their video game by color, as in “those pinks” or the eponymous “Who’s That Broown!,” which is also the painfully repetitive three-minute soundtrack to the game. If you’re serious about winning the dance competition, or even making it through Born Jamerican Apparel, I’d recommend that you turn the sound off — Tribe Called Quest this ain’t. It’s something else: check the link at the bottom for the free download.

Who are more legitimate comparisons? Das Racist nods to Kool G and B Real, among others. I’d say they’ve got more in common with other hip-hopsters of this same generation — Fear & Fancy outta Oakland, who rep environmentalism in their hit “Off the Grid;” Odd Future, a controversial group who want to admit that they’re not gangsters and still rap about it; maybe, to a lesser degree, Janelle Monae, who shares elements of Afrofuturism with their videogame; and a few standouts of conscious hip-hop, particularly OutKast and MF Doom, whose highfalutin nonsequitors blazed a trail for these kids’ claims of lampin’ in Jeruz with the Maccabees. (And of course, they rip Doom’s beats in “Deep Ass Shit – You’ll Get It When You’re High,” and Ghostface Killah’s in “Nutmeg,” and KRS-ONE’s in “Chicken and Meat” . . . and on and on.)

But while Doom’s technique is incredible, and while Fear & Fancy innovate their approach to themselves and politics, Doom is clearly a formalist, a beat and rhymemaker, while Fear & Fancy, like Das Racist, focus on the message. Fear & Fancy write about themselves as visionaries — which they are: who else is rapping about putting solar panels on their Cadillac? — but their stance elevates them above the Every[wo]man, instructing them* “the grid can’t save you!” For Das Racist, it’s not about simplifying themselves into a coherent, commodifiable image: it’s about calling into question the act of commodification.

Das Racist paint themselves the Harold and Kumar of the conscious hip-hop set, unapologetic about their drugs and their love of fast food. But for Das Racist, it’s a love-hate relationship. Their track “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” about being confused by being unable to find each other in a combo fast food joint actually pales in comparison to “Rainbow in the Dark” at explaining this. Wonder at the size of everything

I’m at the White Castle
(I don’t see you here, dog!)
Tiny ass hamburgers
Tiny ass cheeseburgers
Tiny ass chicken sandwiches
It’s outlandish, kid . . .

does not mean that DR spare White Castle their critical eye:

Ask whom the bell tolls for
(Ay yo) Where you get this place, from the hellhole store?

Or that they can ever fully escape it themselves:

While I’m eating lunch now
While I’m eating a burger
Metaphysical spiritual lyrical murder

The postmodern cultural critic is cursed with having no legitimate hierarchy of meaning. Instead, a multiplicity of meanings jostle for supremacy. The burger is the ultimate fix; it’s also murder. The blessing is that those critics can also create their own system to display their perspective. That’s exactly what Das Racist does in their game, presenting ethnicity as an arbitrary but entrenched cause of all of their obstacles, from traditional attempts to jump into marriage to drunk rich douche white kids’ racism. The consistent theme is made clear by their pronunciation of their own name: it’s “Dah’s Racist,” a patois spelling of “That’s Racist,” not the Germanic sounding “Daas Racist.”

But the double entendre is telling. DR lyrics pivot on puns, highlighting the plethora of meanings in their language, and their name is an accusation of bias and an acknowledgment that they can’t avoid bias, that everyone has to recognize the role that race plays in America.

Are you understanding everything, do you got me?
Catch me in the trees where it’s shady like Lockheed Martin
Sparking in the shade of the trees in the park, B
Hark the angels stay singing in the dark
Like the rainbow in the Ronnie James Dio joint
Hit it from the back court
Like it was a three point
I don’t give a fuck, I’m a duck to a decoy
No trustem Whitefaceman like Geronimo
Tried to go to Amsterdam they threw us in Guantanamo

They made the Harold and Kumar parallel: and why not? It’s the most prominent stoner/brownsploitation film of our time. As DR asks, What can brown do for you? The answer, it seems, is make you shake that thinkin’ booty politic. Oh, and did I mention that all of their music is free to download from their site?

*consider this my abdication of the snooty position that this pronoun can only be used with a singular antecedent.