Salon.com > Bomani Jones

Crazy for Jay-Z

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:25:00 +0000

Five minutes into Ridley Scott's "American Gangster," a biopic on the rise to power of Harlem heroin dealer Frank Lucas, it becomes easy to see how Jay-Z would be so inspired by the film that he made an album, one with the cumbersome disclaimer "inspired by the motion picture." The film begins with the death of legendary gangster Bumpy Johnson. Johnson's funeral was a star-studded event, attracting luminaries in sports, entertainment and government.

It's easy to imagine a similar scene when Jigga's time is up. Once a dope dealer himself, Jay-Z is hip-hop's omnipresent figure, the commercial force in a genre that can't be discussed without its being referred to as a "commercial force." No genre is so capitalistic, so reflective of how free enterprise brings out the best and worst in people, so intrigued by its own hustle and the spoils that come with it. Considering Jay's the biggest star in that world, a star that stopped being hip-hop's exclusive property long ago, his funeral would probably be the stuff of Willy Loman's dreams.

Along came Jones

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:18:00 +0000

This is the Andruw Jones we've been waiting for.

This Andruw Jones, the one whose home run binge gives him a realistic chance of spoiling Derrek Lee's Triple Crown dreams, is who the world expected to see when, at age 19, he homered in Game 7 of the 1996 NLCS, making him the youngest man ever to homer in a postseason game. This is the guy the world was ready for after he hit home runs in his first two World Series at bats -- in Yankee Stadium, no less -- that same year.

And this year, Jones is finally delivering on that early promise. He's leading the majors with 35 home runs. He's driven in 87, third best in the National League, and is fifth in slugging at .595.

For the last 10 years, no player has been as good as Jones while also being a colossal disappointment. Perhaps that's not his fault, but he made an unforgivable mistake: Even if only for a moment, he was too good at a sinfully young age for people to not jump to conclusions. He was Dwight Gooden without the dope. Doc's demons led him toward mountains of cocaine; Andruw's were far more benign but just as professionally disastrous. Worse than whatever drove him to receive "VIP service" at an infamous Atlanta strip joint called the Gold Club, something in Andruw's head told him to swing at any pitch he could reach.

White supremacy

Wed, 14 May 2003 23:05:00 +0000

Last year we witnessed the remarkable ouster of Tamyra Gray from "American Idol," which left the far less talented Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini to vie for the show's top prize (and the honor of being financially screwed by the show's producers). Many were stunned when Tamyra, and her multi-octave range and vulnerable delivery, waved a tearful goodbye. Many will be equally devastated tonight if the extravagantly talented Ruben Studdard gets cast off by America, too.

But they shouldn't be surprised.For one thing, anyone stunned by what happens on "American Idol" is measuring idolatry by a fairly irrelevant variable -- talent.

Over the past half century, how many teen idols have really been that talented? Elvis Presley, for all his charisma, never wrote a song and had a vocal range of three notes, at best. The '70s brought us Leif Garrett and a TV show centered on Donny Osmond. The '80s brought us Boston's New Kids on the Block, Caucasian clones of another group with nearly the same name. The '90s? Britney, et al. 'Nuff said.

Pepsi’s sticky race war

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 21:00:00 +0000

In 2003, hip-hop is more tolerable to the masses than it has ever been. These days, rappers are often better known than contemporary rock stars -- even emcees not named Eminem. Seeing rappers doing commercials for major consumer products still gives pioneering hip-hop journalist and "media assassin" Harry Allen pause. "I'm one of those people that, to this day, when I hear hip-hop in a commercial, I'll write down the name of the commercial and the product, just as a form of recording it," Allen says. "I remember very clearly when you didn't hear that."

White kids have jumped on hip-hop the same way that their parents and grandparents did with Little Richard. But there are still curmudgeons, just as there were in the days of early rock 'n' roll. The obvious example has been Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly, rap's most visible critic over the past six months. His first attack on the genre came against Pepsi's choice of rapper Ludacris as its spokesman. O'Reilly and his viewers managed to get the spots pulled, ostensibly over Luda's foul language. Later, O'Reilly attacked Jay-Z when the rapper was named Principal for a Day at schools during his latest tour. Both actions were made under the auspices of protecting "morality," and that is certainly O'Reilly's prerogative. But when Pepsi chose Ozzy Osbourne -- full-time legend, shock-rocker emeritus, and current winner of the Cleaver/Huxtable TV Dad of the Year Award -- O'Reilly was notably silent.

“Oh Pleez GAWD I can’t handle the success!”

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 20:00:00 +0000

Even with a perplexing soon-to-be war brewing, Newsweek has chosen to give its cover to a man who's been dead for eight and a half years. While the stench of international conflict taints the air we breathe and the pages we read, the notoriously boring newsmagazine has sprayed Teen Spirit air freshener upon the world. The result will have half of the nation waiting with bated breath for a man's diary to hit the shelves. They have also amplified a point that, apparently, was only hinted at before.

Simple and plain, Kurt Cobain was a fuckin' genius.

In its Oct. 28 issue, now on newsstands, Newsweek has published excerpts from "Journals," an upcoming collection of diaries by Cobain, who was simultaneously the messiah, martyr and Pontius Pilate of '90s pop. To say that Cobain expanded the definition of a rock star goes without saying. As Axl Rose was in the process of transforming himself from a menacing thug -- a racist, homophobic one, at that -- into a misunderstood, tender, yet bombastic man whose muse was Elton John, so Cobain made depression and introspection vogue in a way that no singer-songwriter had previously done. A crushing sound with an interesting pop sensibility created the perfect backdrop for Cobain's lyrics, the portrait of a thoughtful, confused and compelling young man with acute difficulty dealing with the pain -- physical, emotional and mental -- in his life.

Who’s bad?

Wed, 26 Jun 2002 20:00:00 +0000

Sony has just realized something that's been apparent to everyone else for about a decade now: Michael Jackson is washed up. Jackson has yet to take the hint, but he hasn't released a cutting-edge album in 20 years or an above-average album in 15. Even so, he's been treated like the megastar he once was, a reception that subjects us to a semi-decennial promotional campaign that overloads the world with images of a man in his prime. But when the Wizard emerges from the curtain, he's revealed as a performer on his last legs. So Sony and Jackson have decided to part ways on less than amicable terms, the record company only requiring three new tracks and a greatest-hits compilation from Jackson.

But months after the release of Jackson's sixth solo album, "Invincible," the details of the self-appointed King of Pop's catfight with his record label have come to light. The battle apparently centers on a rumored multimillion-dollar debt, a $25 million promotional campaign that Jackson found to be insufficient and one of the most lucrative publishing catalogs on Earth. If that isn't juicy enough for you, Jackson has summoned Johnnie Cochran and Al Sharpton to his side. Oh, goody.

“Sign O’ the Times”

Mon, 11 Mar 2002 21:00:00 +0000

Little in the world of music is more self-indulgent than the double album. To create one implies an artist has twice as much to say as the majority of performers, what they have to say must be said right then and there and little of it can be understood outside the context of a massive amount of other material. Most double albums -- at least the great ones -- are bound by nothing except their own far-reaching scopes. The subject matter, range of musical styles and grooves on the LP seem to fit together only because nearly everything else under the sun is there too. Such examples aren't hard to think of -- "The Beatles" (aka the White Album), "Exile on Main Street," "Songs in the Key of Life" (perhaps the most thematically consistent double album of them all).

And then came Prince, as grand and in love with his own talent as any performer in memory. His first double album, "1999," was a smashing success, a cultural landmark that showed how genius could turn vulgarity into erotica, weirdness into eccentricity, and synthesizers into orchestral weapons. Most striking is the fact that as brilliant as that album was, its most significant achievement was that it laid the groundwork for "Purple Rain." (Songs on that later album such as "I Would Die 4 U" and "Computer Blue" are simply refinements of the styles introduced on "1999.")