Rock 'n' Roll Nigger

[Latimer]

And the world spreads its legs....
And the world spreads its legs
For another fuckin' star!
'Cause I AM the all-american Antichrist.
I was made in america,
And america hates ME for what I am.
I am YOUR shit.
You should be ashamed of what you have eaten.
I'm a rock & roll nigger!
Baby was a black sheep.
Baby was a whore.
Baby's gotten big,
And baby's getting bigger.
Baby got somethin'.
Baby want more.
Baby, baby, baby was a rock & roll nigger.
How do you like the world around you?
Do you like what you see?
How do you like the world around you?
Ready to be....
(Chorus: Outside of society,
Waiting for me.
Outside of society
Is where I wanna be.)
Baby was a black sheep.
Baby was a whore.
Baby got big,
And baby's getting bigger.
Baby got a gun,
Got her finger on the trigger.
Baby, baby, baby was a rock & roll nigger.
(Chorus) Nigger. Rock & roll nigger.
I'm a rock & roll nigger.
This is your world in which we grow,
And we will grow to hate you.
We will grow to hate you.
We will grow.
We will grow.
We will grow to hate you.
We will grow.
We will grow.
We will grow to hate you.
1-2-3-4!
I was lost in the valley of pleasure.
I was lost in the infinite sea.
I was lost and begging for pleasure.
And this world is waiting for me.
Jimi Hendrix was a nigger.
Jesus Christ and grandma, too.
Brian Warner (what a nigger!)
Nigger, nigger, nigger nigger nigger!
(Chorus Twice)
Yeah! Yeah! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!
FUCK YOU!

 

[manny78]

damn i can you have so much imagination, I'm drunk and I cant even spell my name........

 

[Latimer]

Just a boy, just a boy, just a little fucking boy,
I can never be a man

 

[SHHUGE]

shut the fuck up!!!

 

[Latimer]

why?

 

[Rebelrocker]

Rocknroll nigger? imean they cant comb their hair because its in spirales,how the hell do they get a rocknroll hair?

 

[musclebrains]

Patti Smith is the goddess.

I have seen her perform a zillion times and have interviewed her half a dozen times, including a nightlong stay at the Chelsea with her, Lou Reed, Diamanda Galas and Marianne Faithful. The last time I heard her was at a benefit for an American Buddhist program attended by the Dalai Lama. Patti was on stage with Michael Stipe and Sheryl Horrible Crowe, whom she completely blew off the stage with the song you've quoted. Mainly, though, her lyrics have softened since the death of her husband.

Did you see her book, "Complete," Latimer? It came out a few years ago on Rimbaud's birthday.

 

[Latimer]

Patti Smith is the goddess.

I have seen her perform a zillion times and have interviewed her half a dozen times, including a nightlong stay at the Chelsea with her, Lou Reed, Diamanda Galas and Marianne Faithful. The last time I heard her was at a benefit for an American Buddhist program attended by the Dalai Lama. Patti was on stage with Michael Stipe and Sheryl Horrible Crowe, whom she completely blew off the stage with the song you've quoted. Mainly, though, her lyrics have softened since the death of her husband.

Did you see her book, "Complete," Latimer? It came out a few years ago on Rimbaud's birthday.

I haven't read her book and haven't heard much of her music. The actual song I quoted was Marilyn Manson's cover. Slightly different lyrics at the beginning and end. It's amazing how many people get offended by the song. They threatened to arrest Manson a few years ago in Canada if he performed the song.

http://www.addict.com/issues/3.09/html/lofi/Reviews/Live/Manson,_Marilyn/

Funny to say then that Manson's too subtle for many people, yet this seems to be the case. The most overtly rebellious thing he did in Toronto was to play his rendition of Patti Smith's "Rock And Roll Nigger" after being threatened with arrest for doing so by the lame- brained Toronto police, who thought the nearly 20-year-old song "racist." Duhhhhh. The Rev. Manson patiently explained that the lyrics instead refer to all people who are oppressed for "being the way they are," for thinking and/or looking different. Then, after a heartfelt dedication to "the fucking Canadian Police Force," he of course played a blazing version of Smith's rebel anthem.

3 : a member of a socially disadvantaged class of persons <it's time for somebody to lead all of America's niggers... all the people who feel left out of the political process -- Ron Dellums>

 

[strongchick]

in "Bamboozled", audience members/fans of various races being interviewed screamed out "I'm a nigger!". As if identifying as such meant they shared the true implications of the word.

I applaud the intention, though.

 

[musclebrains]

The song is an anthem to "otherness" and the virtue of subcultural movements. There are plenty of African Americans who would not qualify as "rock and roll niggers," which is also a specific reference to the way rock and roll, as a rebellious movement, has been characterized in this country. Patti's song precedes the appropriation of alternative culture by the mainstream and the homogenizing ethos of assimlationist agendas. Undoubted it would be heard differently now, but, honestly, I tend to hear eminem's music in much the same way.

 

[strongchick]

The song is an anthem to "otherness" and the virtue of subcultural movements. There are plenty of African Americans who would not qualify as "rock and roll niggers," which is also a specific reference to the way rock and roll, as a rebellious movement, has been characterized in this country. Patti's song precedes the appropriation of alternative culture by the mainstream and the homogenizing ethos of assimlationist agendas. Undoubted it would be heard differently now, but, honestly, I tend to hear eminem's music in much the same way.

As usual, musclebrains - you are the master of language.

Anyway. Tell me this. Is it 'fair' for a rock'n'roll icon or rap or whatever, to take on such an anthem? I mean, you can remove nose rings, hair dye, change your dress. But you can't remove other genetic 'tattoos'. I admire those who take on differences and embrace them, but I still wonder how intensely would they embrace these differences if they couldn't remove them at a moment's notice. I mean, if eminem is feeling so persecuted, he could always do religious rap! He is just an opportunist. Identifying with the wrong side of the tracks to make money.

 

[musclebrains]

As usual, musclebrains - you are the master of language.

Anyway. Tell me this. Is it 'fair' for a rock'n'roll icon or rap or whatever, to take on such an anthem? I mean, you can remove nose rings, hair dye, change your dress. But you can't remove other genetic 'tattoos'. I admire those who take on differences and embrace them, but I still wonder how intensely would they embrace these differences if they couldn't remove them at a moment's notice. I mean, if eminem is feeling so persecuted, he could always do religious rap! He is just an opportunist. Identifying with the wrong side of the tracks to make money.

I don't think Patti Smith "took on an anthem." I believe as a goddess of rock and roll -- "nigger music," as it's long been called in America -- she spontaneously produced that song. She really is the poet-laureate of punk and I just can't imagine her in the role you're describing. Do you think every white jazz musician absorbed in a form with Af/Am roots is playing a part?

I'm less sure about eminem. I was talking to my partner's (white) cousin last night. He is a producer of rap music and his girlfriend is black. His sister, as I said on another thread, is also married to a black guy and they have two children. For reasons I have no idea of, they have long identified with Af/Americans. The cousin told me that rap music IS white music now -- black music marketed to white kids (they buy 80 percent of it). Is it more cynical for eminem to be doing the same thing as a white kid? I'm not sure. I am sure his lyrics are very misunderstood. Many of them are obviously parodies, a kind of articulated dream of internal voices. I'm not sure he's being any more exploitative than any other singer.

 

[strongchick]

I don't think Patti Smith "took on an anthem." I believe as a goddess of rock and roll -- "nigger music," as it's long been called in America -- she spontaneously produced that song. She really is the poet-laureate of punk and I just can't imagine her in the role you're describing. Do you think every white jazz musician absorbed in a form with Af/Am roots is playing a part?


That one can be absorbed in an art form is still different in that you can separate yourself from the art, much like you can take out a nose ring. Or can you? I think of Janis Joplin in this regard, since I know little of Patti Smith.

I remember standing on a street corner on the north side of Chicago, in Lincoln Park, right outside the Jamba Juice. These two black girls were waiting for a bus, and this white guy drives up in a very nice sports car with the sun roof open, at night, with his girl. The two black girls notice he's got some gangsta rap pumped up real loud, woofers and all....the black girls lean over and shout into the roof "now you know you don't know nothin' about no gangsta rap. Take yo ass back to Kenilworth, mofo!" Kenilworth is a very rich white suburb. I shook my head and laughed...recognizing that both parties have been sold a bill of goods. The white guy can now 'relate' and the black girls have something of their 'own' that is popular in mainstream America. And still the division. Sigh.


I'm less sure about eminem. I was talking to my partner's (white) cousin last night. He is a producer of rap music and his girlfriend is black. His sister, as I said on another thread, is also married to a black guy and they have two children. For reasons I have no idea of, they have long identified with Af/Americans. The cousin told me that rap music IS white music now -- black music marketed to white kids (they buy 80 percent of it). Is it more cynical for eminem to be doing the same thing as a white kid? I'm not sure. I am sure his lyrics are very misunderstood. Many of them are obviously parodies, a kind of articulated dream of internal voices. I'm not sure he's being any more exploitative than any other singer.

It isn't more cynical for eminem....but it is strange for me to take seriously the social implications of characteristics so easily removed.

Not that I feel holier...I'm the perfect example of the assimilated corporate woman.

 

[musclebrains]

""That one can be absorbed in an art form is still different in that you can separate yourself from the art, much like you can take out a nose ring. Or can you? I think of Janis Joplin in this regard, since I know little of Patti Smith. """

I don't know what to say. I mean, if you reduce art to sociology, I think you're probably right. But art is so much more than that. I am also a fan of Janis (in fact I rode in her limo with her across the Ga. Tech campus when I was just a hippie baby). But Janis was a singer, period, and Patti Smith is a genius visionary poet. Her song is not about race. But language is what we're stuck with and the claim that rock and roll was "nigger music" made the language she chose exactly right to describe her pleasure in taking the outlaw's role. As a white girl, did she suffer as much as a sharecropper's daughter in Alabama? No. But few rock and rollers have made as much meaning out of suffering (with the possible exception of Diamanda Galas, who literally began her career singing as a patient in mental hospitals). More to the point, as far as I know, Patti Smith in now way attempted to appropriate black culture.


""I remember standing on a street corner on the north side of Chicago, in Lincoln Park, right outside the Jamba Juice. These two black girls were waiting for a bus, and this white guy drives up in a very nice sports car with the sun roof open, at night, with his girl. The two black girls notice he's got some gangsta rap pumped up real loud, woofers and all....the black girls lean over and shout into the roof "now you know you don't know nothin' about no gangsta rap. Take yo ass back to Kenilworth, mofo!" Kenilworth is a very rich white suburb. I shook my head and laughed...recognizing that both parties have been sold a bill of goods. The white guy can now 'relate' and the black girls have something of their 'own' that is popular in mainstream America. And still the division. Sigh. ""

My word, you're not expecting the "division" to be erased, are you? Do you want that? I'm confused.

""It isn't more cynical for eminem....but it is strange for me to take seriously the social implications of characteristics so easily removed.

Not that I feel holier...I'm the perfect example of the assimilated corporate woman. ""

I'll take my outrage where I can find it -- which is mainly in youth culture now. Gay culture is grotesque and most Af/Am culture -- of which I confess I was deeply enamored in my 20s -- seems assimlationist too now.

May I submit that your final sentence expresses the essential problem here? You are assimilated and on the outside at once. Do you think it should be one or the other? I've been in assimilated positions as editor of several magazines, with mainly straight staffs, but my heart always remains in the, um, periphery of the badlands. That's where the "juice" is -- the mind of the outlaw is what gives me the creativity to work at the center when I need to. Complete assimilation is my vision of the lowest cell of hell.

 

[Test boy]

Why is gay culture grotesque??? I really want to know why this is so.

 

[strongchick]

More to the point, as far as I know, Patti Smith in now way attempted to appropriate black culture.


Now if we could only define what 'appropriating black culture' is...especially in light of the fact that many blacks have assimilated.





My word, you're not expecting the "division" to be erased, are you? Do you want that? I'm confused.


I'm confused too. I mean, hell, isn't hip hop supposed to help us "understand each other and come together?" I'm a dreamer.


I'll take my outrage where I can find it -- which is mainly in youth culture now. Gay culture is grotesque and most Af/Am culture -- of which I confess I was deeply enamored in my 20s -- seems assimlationist too now.

May I submit that your final sentence expresses the essential problem here? You are assimilated and on the outside at once. Do you think it should be one or the other? I've been in assimilated positions as editor of several magazines, with mainly straight staffs, but my heart always remains in the, um, periphery of the badlands. That's where the "juice" is -- the mind of the outlaw is what gives me the creativity to work at the center when I need to. Complete assimilation is my vision of the lowest cell of hell.

I think it would be nice if assimilated meant I could be accepted by both cultures, not that I'm rejecting one for the other. The fact that I'm _aware_ of my assimilation will always make me an outsider. If I could just put that notion away - perhaps this awareness is what makes me appear racist to some on this board.

And as you say, the _mind_ of the outlaw is what banishes you to the outskirts. I think now I understand another reason why many who are different are involved in creative arts. There is an advantage to being on the outside when you want to create unique innovative ideas/things. It always comes back to common sense, doesn't it? Or maybe I oversimplify. I also don't give people credit - it is too simple to say that outside characteristics are the only thing that make one a target for some '-ism'. I should know.

And of course, I will never be completely assimilated. It would ruin me. I'd be a caricature of myself.

 

[musclebrains]

""Now if we could only define what 'appropriating black culture' is...especially in light of the fact that many blacks have assimilated. ""

Good point, but what I mean is appropriating the mythical and/or real outlaw status of black Americans, their "otherness" to the degree it persists.


""My word, you're not expecting the "division" to be erased, are you? Do you want that? I'm confused.
I'm confused too. I mean, hell, isn't hip hop supposed to help us "understand each other and come together?" I'm a dreamer. ""

Yeah, you are. The long celebrated redemption wrought by rock and roll is a moment.

""I think it would be nice if assimilated meant I could be accepted by both cultures, not that I'm rejecting one for the other. The fact that I'm _aware_ of my assimilation will always make me an outsider. If I could just put that notion away - perhaps this awareness is what makes me appear racist to some on this board.
And as you say, the _mind_ of the outlaw is what banishes you to the outskirts. I think now I understand another reason why many who are different are involved in creative arts. There is an advantage to being on the outside when you want to create unique innovative ideas/things. It always comes back to common sense, doesn't it? Or maybe I oversimplify. I also don't give people credit - it is too simple to say that outside characteristics are the only thing that make one a target for some '-ism'. I should know.
And of course, I will never be completely assimilated. It would ruin me. I'd be a caricature of myself. ""

Yep. That's why the biggest advocates of complete assimilation are actually conservatives. They want to disappear difference, process it in the metaphor of the melting pot. To the degree it can't be processed out of sight, it should be closeted in some way. Thus "don't ask/don't tell" for gay people and the particularly strong insistence that ethnic minorities adopt the values of the dominant culture. When liberals support the continuance of cultural diversity and ethnic difference, they are accused of promoting something counter to the American way. It's tedious. Only a fool bothers to argue about it.

Surely you've noticed the way the same people who bash you with racial epithets also insist that you are not "African American" but AMERICAN (they say, with grand notes of self-righteousness). They might as well say: "Nigger, you can't change your skin color, but you can at least act like an American."

Being an outsider is a gift. That's why so many white kids valorize rap culture. At the same time, people always tend to dislike the "other." There is a long tradition of black writing on this subject. I want basic civil rights and freedom to love whom I choose. But I do not want to move behind the white picket fence with the Brady Bunch.

 

[musclebrains]

Why is gay culture grotesque??? I really want to know why this is so.

I find it grotesque. I'm a minority within a minority.

I dislike it because it's become nothing but a huge whining plea to be assimilated by the dominant culture. In the course of that, it's tried to normalize itself, basically by disappearing its sexuality from public discourse -- when any fool knows buttfucking among members of the same gender is is going to give most straight people the heebie jeebies.

What could be dumber than on the one hand trying to form an identity among people whose single similarity is their choice to have "sodomy" with their own gender and, at the same time, trying to hide the fact as significant.

Twenty years ago it was fun to be queer. Now it's like being a member of the Republican Party.

 

[Test boy]

I find it grotesque. I'm a minority within a minority.

I dislike it because it's become nothing but a huge whining plea to be assimilated by the dominant culture. In the course of that, it's tried to normalize itself, basically by disappearing its sexuality from public discourse -- when any fool knows buttfucking among members of the same gender is is going to give most straight people the heebie jeebies.

What could be dumber than on the one hand trying to form an identity among people whose single similarity is their choice to have "sodomy" with their own gender and, at the same time, trying to hide the fact as significant.

Twenty years ago it was fun to be queer. Now it's like being a member of the Republican Party.

Your way with words is truly a rarity. Interesting identification with the Republican party. I'm a Republican but find many of my "peers"to be mean spirited and hopelessly dogmatic. I can't run for a powerful political position because the party would never back me since I am not a total disciple of Republicanism. The truth is that I find both hardcore democrats and republicans to be boorish. One looks after the wealthy and privledged, one caters to the poor and minorities. Who looks after the rest??? I have a much higher opinion of the middle class than the other classes.

 

[musclebrains]

Your way with words is truly a rarity. Interesting identification with the Republican party. I'm a Republican but find many of my "peers"to be mean spirited and hopelessly dogmatic. I can't run for a powerful political position because the party would never back me since I am not a total disciple of Republicanism. The truth is that I find both hardcore democrats and republicans to be boorish. One looks after the wealthy and privledged, one caters to the poor and minorities. Who looks after the rest??? I have a much higher opinion of the middle class than the other classes.

Pity your consituency, the middle class, is dying.

 

[strongchick]

There is a long tradition of black writing on this subject. I want basic civil rights and freedom to love whom I choose. But I do not want to move behind the white picket fence with the Brady Bunch.

James Baldwin has taken on some of this subject. Oh how I absolutely love his writing. I came home when I read a novel of his for the first time.

 

[musclebrains]

James Baldwin has taken on some of this subject. Oh how I absolutely love his writing. I came home when I read a novel of his for the first time.

Yeah, i was thinking of him in particular. What a genius he was.

 

[Test boy]

Pity your consituency, the middle class, is dying.

Could that be because we are legislatively required to support the lower and upper classes? While being largely ignored by the power elite.

 

[strongchick]

Could that be because we are legislatively required to support the lower and upper classes? While being largely ignored by the power elite.

or....

in order to maintain our status we are required to have a two-income household?

 

[Test boy]

or....

in order to maintain our status we are required to have a two-income household?

While being tempted to agree, I would have to point this out. Rich people are probably the most likely to have two incomes. Does having two incomes mean the family is dying? Perhaps it does in the long term. We shall see.

 

[musclebrains]

I thought it was just because the wealthy class needs a burgeoning underclass to maintain its status.

 

[Test boy]

I thought it was just because the wealthy class needs a burgeoning underclass to maintain its status.

I suppose it does.

Even though I am basically Republican, I can't think of a good reason to support the rich except for campaign contributions. The rich do a particularly adept job at taking care of themselves.