I'm gonna say some shit. It may be misguided and biased. Actually, I know it is. But none the less, its valid because I'm fucking fed up with some of the shit I've seen lately.
We all have some sort of message to get across. Usually, at least. If not, and we're still making art in some form, the interpretation is up for grabs. I like it better that way sometimes. However, the thing about messages is that they tend to have a direction or a target demographic. I understand that. Its hard to walk through life as a quadriplegic (no pun intended) and not try to reach out to people in wheelchairs. You know that walk of life (no pun intended). You know the ups and downs of being paralyzed. Therefore, you aim your words/ your ideas/ your passions towards that area and hope it helps those who are looking for it.
But heres the thing: dont diminish or narrow your impact by aiming so small. Just dont. There's tons of people out there who might not be a girl or poverty stricken or paralyzed or diseased who can and will connect to what your talking about. Your message is universal, and you should embrace that. Embrace that maybe, possibly whatever it is your throwing out into the world will maybe, possibly be interpreted differently than how you intended. Actually, hope it does. Thats the mark of an artist. If you wrote a song about break ups and some lonely dude out there can relate to it, dont fuck up his connection to YOUR art by saying 'well this was for all the little girls out there who dont know someone else has been there'. What's he supposed to feel then? Was your purpose to leave him out? Or was it to make him feel like a little girl?
I'm not innocent when it comes to this. I'll admit that. The majority of my passion goes into troubled youth and helping them connect to writing because yes, that troubled teen is who I was. But I would never write something or teach something in such a specific manner. I would never say 'well, I wrote this piece for all the lost 15 year old dudes out there who use ecstasy every weekend'. Why wouldn't I say that? Because that target is so narrow that I will most definitely be leaving out a good number of people who caught on to my work for a completely different reason. Maybe some one related to a part where I said something about god. Or maybe some one related to a part where I mentioned being cheated on. Or maybe, someone liked one little line. It doesn't matter the reason as to why they caught on it only matters that they did. Explaining your work is one thing, but aiming small when you know damn well your impact is big is just naive.
Most, not all, but most of this was brought up by the VMAs. That god damn waste of time. I found it interesting to hear peoples responses to it though. A lot of people had buckets of shit to say about Lady Gaga and Tyler the Creator. I understand this but I dont understand people being so damn stupid. First off, the life of an artist is crazy and scrutinized. Everything they do is A.) Public and B.) Critiqued. So lets get somethings straight: Lady Gaga is fucking brilliantly retarded. I say this because, going along with everything I just wrote, she has one purpose and one purpose only and thats to target an alternative life style. All to her. She empowers people who might not find it else where. Awesome. But to be honest, I've connected with some of her work and I am not a transgender. I am not a lesbian. I am not gay. So every time she throws her stereotypical banter about that shit I just tune the fuck out because thats not why I connected to it. I connected to it because its positive. Because its hopeful. Not because I'm sexually different from everyone else. So shut the fuck up with that shit. Explain yourself, fine okay- but dont marginalize your audience.
As for Tyler, people are questioning his art. More specifically, MTV for giving him the award for Best New Artist. Apparently, the problem is that he said the word 'faggot' 200 sum times in his album. I understand the sensitivity to that word. Honestly, I do and thats why you wont catch me saying that shit. But- I used to use it as much as I use the word 'the' and sometimes, I miss it. Not because I miss offending gays, but because it rolls of the tongue powerfully. Its a fun word. It hits right. Its satisfying. However, now I've grown up a little and don't keep such offensive words in my vocab but at the end of the day, I know my generation. My generation does not associate the word 'fag' with its definition. We dont call gays 'fags', we call our friends who are acting like fags 'fag'. If a gay dude was acting like a 'fag', we would call him a gay 'fag'. My generation has taken a word, much like the word 'like' or 'dog' and turned it into a completely different word with a different meaning. However, on the latter side of things, I get the offensive nature of what I just said. I understand that the word 'faggot' originates back to the Salem Witch Trials. In that time, they would burn the witches with bundles of sticks called 'faggots' and with them, they would throw in the gays. Hence, this is why you get the term 'flaming faggot'. So every time you say this, it resonates a little deeper than just a 'fun, satisfying' word. My point, though, is that none of this fucking matters at all. For anyone who grew up in the 90's, this is identically the same reason that made Eminem hated and loved. He was offensively genius. He was putting people on the edges of their seats with his humor, and thats the fucking point: its just a god damn joke. For the people who take shit so seriously, they're just adding fuel to these fires and it has nothing to do with faggots or making fun of celebs, it has to do with our fundamental rights to say what ever the fuck we want. Life is too serious. These artists understand that. Eminem is now considered one of the greatest hip hop artists of all times, yet he started out with the same attention getters that Tyler is. Em killed Dr. Dre in his songs. He went after the Spice Girls and Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson. He was making music mocking the current 'idols' of the time and did it in an artistic 'dont give a fuck what you think' type way. I appreciate that.
Tyler ate cockroaches and stabbed Bruno Mars in his throat in his song. Did you notice both Bruno and Tyler were at the VMAs and it didn't fucking matter what he said in his song? B.O.B gave more of a fuck about what Tyler said than anyone else and you know what, that just gave Tyler that much more acknowledgment. The same way Eminems shit did to him in the late 90's. This is nothing different people. This is just brilliant marketing and pristine awareness of what works and what doesn't. Did I like Tyler the Creators 'Goblin'? Nope, but I appreciated his art. It got a lot of people to react. Thats art. Whether you like to admit it, thats fucking art.
If people want to care about anything, why don't you care that Chris Brown is still on probation for beating a woman while he gets glorified dancing around in the air like he's the next MJ? Does that matter? Or does it matter that some kid from Cali with a different swag writes some brutal images into our minds? You tell me.
Ugh. Got that off my chest.
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