I've been listening to the new rock-rap act Shwayze. The music is catchy as all get out but it just dawned on me the way that it's equal parts ingriguingly and annoyingly just so very LA (Malibu, to be more precise.)
Several times on the album, most notably on the big single, "Buzzin," Shwayze asserts that being known, fame in itself, is the be all end all (as Sarah Palin would say). The chorus goes:
Met her at a back yard block party by the bar/ She was looking at me like she knew who I was/ She was buzzin all over me, she was buzzin all over me, she was buzzin all over me like she fell in love."
(No, I'm not sure what a "back yard block party's bar" would look like either, just go with it.)
In LA, Shwayze openly admits (as he sees it anyway), the only way the hottest hotties fall for you is if you are somebody recognizable, and by being recognizable you are inherently powerful. In another song, Shwayze misses out on a threesome because one of the ladies who'd otherwise be interested didn't recognize him or know his music.
Listening to the record makes me so happy I didn't head out to LA after college, that I've avoided maybe the worst place for someone like me, who can all to easily fall prey to that most fickle of mistresses, fame, or rather, the oh-so-unquenchable desire, for it. The smaller the community I've lived in, the happier I've become, in large part because I don't compare my success to others so much in terms of how many people know me or my work.
Now maybe I'm just looking for a convenient way to tie this in to recent posts here, but something comparable strikes me – especially after last night's debate with its often split-screen coverage in which McCain looked like a bratty troll on speed as he grimaced and smiled and blinked and blinked and blinked as Obama spke – as a major difference between the two candidtates. John McCain strikes me as more like Shwayze, someone who wants to be known, to be seen as a big man, because to be seen is in itself to succeed, who cares what the content is, just BE SEEN and thus loved.
Barack, on the other hand, seems like someone who, perhaps just as egomaniacally, don't get me wrong, measures his success less by being seen than by being heard, and by reaching and affecting those who hear him, actually accomplishing things. Of course, winning the presidency will feel like a huge accomplishment to Mr. O, but if he doesn't accomplish a lot of what he hopes to, if people don't hear his words and see their wisdom, he simply won't feel complete. For McCain it seems as if the victory itself – winning the popularity contest and getting the prize: power!) would be more than enough for a while, until there's something else to win.
Traditionally, rappers measure success on their verbal skills, on their ability to get their message out or to shame a fellow rapper into submission via their velvet tongues (more recently via violence too, but the ability to spit it better than any one has always been the truest measure of an MC).For Shwayze, it's fame/popularity for whateverreason in itself that seems to be the measure.
Last night McCain seemed to be jumping up and down yelling look at me look at me I'm the one you're supposed to like, dammit, I earned it, he didn't, it's not fair not fair not fair, while Barack looked like someone who, like Bill Clinton, really wanted, megamaniacally or no, to get a message across, to improve his country and the world. It doesn't make him a saint, but I'll take (and I'd much rather be) the prophet/poet/megalomaniac than the stunted superficial narcissist, Rakim over Shwayze, any day.
That said, I do keep listening to Shwayze, I even kind of like him, but I just won't vote for him, or set him up with my sister, if I had a sister, and he was on some kind of older-woman kick and asked me about her, my sister, that is. I'm worried that this will kill him to hear (Shwayz, call me babe, let's not start one of those online wars of words in which both parties just take everything the worst way and it just crazy escalates, k?)
These thoughts are very new and straight out of my head and I feel I may well be confusing some terms and making some dubious comparisons, and I'll probably comment on my own post later to that effect, but I hope this sparks some interest. It interests me. It also interests me in terms of Paul Newman, whom I always loved and plan to write about here soon – his ego, and what he seemed, from a fan's skewed perspective, anyway, to value as measures of success, that is.
