There are many things happening in pop culture lately that have taken up real estate in my head. Frankly, I couldn’t decide which I wanted to discuss at length, or if any one topic deserved a deep dive over the others, so I’m sharing my high level thoughts on all of them.
I present to you, hungry reader — the first edition of quick bites. Just a lil’ taste.
A GOAT is born
Lauded by his fans and peers as one of the best to ever do it long before last week, Kendrick Lamar has been sitting comfortably on a throne of rap royalty for years now. But after The Pop Out: Ken and Friends concert on Juneteenth, Kendrick earned his coronation as one of music’s GOATs — and preeminent haters.
For those not into rap, please refer to this video and this timeline to get you up to speed on the beef between Kendrick and Drake. (If you’re a real sicko, read the Wikipedia page on the feud.) The war truly began in April, culminating by the middle of May after Drake admitted defeat with his release of “The Heart Part 6.” But those reading between the lines of both men’s lyrics could deduce that these two have been sneak dissing each other for the better part of the last decade.
The concert itself was fantastic. I didn’t watch it live on Amazon Prime or Twitch, but thankfully the spirit of pirating is still alive and well, so I watched it on YouTube after the fact. Kendrick’s stage presence and breath control is head and shoulders above many of his peers. The energy of the crowd was electric, often going bar for bar with Kendrick on the diss tracks released just a month ago. Performing in front of his hometown LA crowd created a communal energy not often seen during live shows; this point was driven home by the number of alleged Crips (and Bloods!) gang members that danced onstage at the end of it all.
The only misstep in the midst of it was Kendrick including noted domestic abuser Dr. Dre in his set, reminding us that while the former did manage to get a song using the word “pedophile” to the top of the music charts, this whole beef was never really about protecting women. It was about gotchas and one-upsmanship. Yet, I would be lying if I didn’t say that I enjoyed the concert greatly in spite of this blemish.
In the words of Hunter Harris, this was the Renaissance concert for straight men, but also lovers of Kendrick, haters of Drake, and Cali representers. It was a victory lap unlike any we’ve ever seen. It was Drake’s funeral. And they livestreamed it!!!
A quick eulogy for MTV News
MTV News was wiped from the internet this past Monday, to raucous boos from former writers of the website. About two decades’ worth of music, entertainment, and political news written by and for the youth was just bloop, deleted. This is bad, children. Very bad.
This news follows the troubling trend of media publications shuttering and/or removing any trace of their existence. Days after the exodus, a similar move was made by Paramount to remove decades of content from the website of Comedy Central. Remember when they promised, almost warned us, that everything online would live forever? Well, turns out, that’s true up until the moment executives decide it doesn’t fit their bottom line or their political agenda. We can’t learn from history if the archives are gone. Sure, you could say these articles and episodes were just dumb pop culture, but they are still anthropological in that they reflect the social and political attitudes of their time. So many people’s work involves studying, referencing, and re-contextualizing cultural history for the purpose of making sense of today’s world (ahem, yours truly). If we remove archival content, we lose our ability to learn from history.
MTV News at one time was doing actual hard news reporting — they were how teens of the ‘90s first learned of Kurt Cobain’s death and the Columbine shooting. Kurt Loder was the youth’s Walter Cronkite or Anderson Cooper. Concurrent with the rise of Nickelodeon, MTV News on television was one of the few outlets interested in actually hearing what young people thought about pop culture and world events. It gave the opposite energy of “Here’s Another Industry Millennials Are Ruining” articles that became infamous in the 2010s. Even after MTV News pivoted to be exclusively online in the ‘00s, it was, in the best and worst of times, a section of media that took youth culture seriously. Many culture critics we love today cut their teeth at MTV News, similar to BuzzFeed.
With its death, MTV has rid any proof of its own past credibility as a bastion of music, culture, and trending conversations. That’s a sad thought, as a person who has many formative memories of MTV programming growing up. Looking at MTV now is like visiting your old haunts after a decade to discover it has been gentrified beyond comprehension. Nothing to trigger the memories, almost like they didn’t happen.
@ WNBA onlookers: getcha heads in the game
The rivalry between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark from their college days has carried over into the WNBA. Droves of new fans and talking heads have taken interest in the women’s league particularly due to Caitlin — but let’s be honest, it’s not solely due to her talent. She’s been compared to Steph Curry in terms of accuracy on the court, but we have to be honest and say a large part of her popularity is the novelty of her whiteness in a Black-dominated sport. Specifically, her high-level skill as a white player in a Black-dominated sport. Oh buddy, nothing inspires condescension in white fans quite like having a white player that’s better than most (Black) others in a league. This attitude is what has played out since the season started, from social media to national news.
Onlookers have sensationalized any slight to Caitlin on the court from her opponents — keyword: OPPONENTS — as some racial vendetta against her. People have White Savior’d her, citing her as the sole reason people care about the W now, chiding any Black woman who dare play rough with her in a literal competitive sport. Angel Reese has bore the brunt of these criticisms, with her recent flagrant 1 foul against Caitlin making headlines on *CNN* for god’s sake. I saw people online calling her unsportsmanlike, saying she should be suspended, using words like “assault” and “charge,” criminalizing language that immediately dog whistles to racists that Angel is one of the “bad” ones.
Neither Caitlin nor Angel have taken personal issue with said foul; Caitlin has steadfastly chalked up the target on her back to competition in a sport at the pro level. That doesn’t stop talking heads from jumping to defend this white woman who, I must stress, is not asking for it.
Our society is not set up to believe white women as capable of defending themselves. One of the pillar ideologies of white cisheteropatriarchy is that white women, as the object of white male desire, must be protected so they may fulfill their roles in service of white men. Even non-white people have bought into this, viewing the women of their respective races as barbaric, hypersexual, or unladylike in comparison to the standard of docile white femininity. The idea of “grit” is foreign to white women by design; they are socialized to believe this is inaccessible to them so they continue to believe themselves inferior to male power.
So when you have a white woman in a competitive sport be treated as a player rather than a white woman, the resulting cognitive dissonance is why we see fans suddenly forget how sports work. It’s especially comical to watch white men, who generally consider themselves THE authority on most sports, ignore the competitive psychology involved in basketball. If there’s a star player on the other team that poses a danger in terms of scoring, you try to take ‘em out! It’s simple math! The rules don’t change because Caitlin is a white woman. Furthermore, Black women are bloodied and body-checked on the court all the time, way worse than anything Caitlin has suffered, and it’s crickets from fans.
The venture to infantilize Caitlin Clark is annoying, but it presents a greater danger to the league at large. Some fans have pointed out that refs have been stricter on fouls in the wake of the media coverage of Caitlin. People are going to fuck around and soften the league because they couldn’t handle seeing Black women play with the same intensity as their male counterparts. Everyone needs to toughen up. The mentality that women must necessarily be nicer, gentler, softer when playing sports (!!!) has held women’s pro leagues back for too long. Let these women play like women — and let us reevaluate what playing “like a woman” can mean.