Japanese Cartoon: Bigger Than the Beatles (Sach O)
Sach O put his money where his mouth is and moved to a country without indie kids. He didn’t anticipate the dance-pop though.
I love Lupe Fiasco’s new band, Japanese Cartoon. I hope they blow the fuck up, take over the world and become the biggest phenomenon in music ever.
Not because I like their stuff mind you, oh God no. Yeah those demos that leaked are funny and all but do I really need to hear a Chicago rapper’s overly digital take on sub-Oasis Brit-Pop? No, I just enjoy the poetic justice involved because Japanese Cartoon is payback for every single smug, upper class, white-liberal douchebag who’s been appreciating rap “ironically” for the past few years. This is a taste of their own medicine, this is karmic, this is what’s right.
Look upon thy creation and despair hipsters for thou haft brought thy own ruin upon thyself and it bears the name Fiasco.
I anxiously await the despondent Pitchfork news reports about Pazz and Jop naming the group’s forthcoming release Indiestar album of the year. I’m making popcorn for the angry British people complaining about the accent (sorry guys: Mick Jagger) and the hordes of black kids dressing in Abercrombie and Fitch, saying “mate” and rocking their jeans entirely too tight while laughing at it (already happening). I can’t wait for the first single to sample some obnoxiously obvious indie rock loop and for Japanese Cartoon’s adoring fans to rock out to it while completely laughing and disregarding the source material. I want the Youtube video to get millions of hits and to feature a preening Lupe going through every rock cliché in the book as if it was a completely new and novel idea and I want the viewers to think “hey, this is easy, I can do this too!” and then go off to form their own shitty bands.
30 years down the line, I want Japanese Cartoon to be remembered as the single greatest rock band of their generation, the group that brought guitar music back from the dead and bravely explored new fusions between electronic music and rock. I fully expect their greatest hit packages (in remastered, mind-implant form) to dominate virtual stores everywhere and to go quadruple Diamond in Indonesia. Their reunion shows will sell out stadiums worldwide culminating at Beijing’s Grand National Stadium, the center for all world culture. They will be music.
Well, maybe not, after all indie kids are the only ones who treat other people’s music like that. And if all that happened it’d probably get real old, really fast.
But it’d still kind of be worth it.
Download:
MP3: Japanese Cartoon-”Army”
MP3: Japanese Cartoon-”Heirplanes”
Stumble It!
January 8th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Sooo…Sach, lemme get this right? You want Japanese Cartoon to become the real life version of Wyld Stallyns? I really find this whole Hipster/Blipster “movement” nauseating.
Oh, and you’re still wrong about 2006. LOL.
One.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:07 am
i was totally thinking about this last night. not particularly japanese cartoon, because i don’t really care to hear what they actually sound like. i was thinking about hipsters’ ironic love of hip-hop, and how it’s somewhat of a concealed form of racism.
now, i generally let hipsters do their thing while i do mine, but when one can have a fond appreciation for highbrow experimental acts, but will listen to the most dimwitted rap imaginable, then someone has to call bullshit on the uneven playing field. if they can genuinely appreciate something guitar-based that will challenge them, why wouldn’t they give the same attention to a rap lyricist who’s worth a damn?
things that make you go, “hmmmmmm.”
January 8th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I’ve always felt that hipster’s ironic love of hip-hop is less veiled racism and more of an expression of plain-old awkward class / race differences.
Sort of like if I take a Hoosier to a sushi bar. They know it is good and good for them, but they’re all “How the hell am I supposed to eat this thing?” and they end-up asking for a fork, embarrassing the rest of the table. But you can’t blame them; they don’t have many sushi bars in Indiana.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
you know, that’s a good point.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Yeah, but that doesn’t account for the sense of entitlement. To continue the metaphor, it would be as if that same guy walked into a Sushi spot, dipped the pieces in ketchup and laughed at everyone for using Soy sauce which is “soooo 96″.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
It’s funny too how they use the “music belongs to everybody to share” argument only when they’re swagger-jacking music that isn’t their’s. When it comes to regular indie-music, it’s hella exclusive a la Pitchfork and such.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Fuck everyone!
January 8th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I don’t think hipsters’ fascination with hip hop is veiled racism. It more speaks to the homogenization of the scene. They don’t listen to ALL hip hop, only Pop mainstream hip hop… the Snoops and Dre’s of the world. The ironic love of hip hop is just as strong as the ironic love of 80’s metal, the Beastie Boys, and Brittany Spears. Basically what Girl Talk is doing with his mashups.
What Lupe is doing is just making fun of that same ironic love of hip hop by mocking brit rock. I don’t think he’s sitting around saying under his breath “fuckin crackers, take that!”
January 8th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Douglas-
The problem with your point though is that high-brow experimental music has a whole lot to do with “dimwitted rap”, on the production tip at least.
Sach-
Interesting post, similar to your Shop Boyz one awhile back. That song seemed like the reverse of rockers using rap for a song or something. Japanese Cartoon is more on the (mind the quotes) “appropriation” angle and should get anybody listening to think about that. Was this Lupe’s intention?
Unfortunately, I don’t think it was, but I’ll take it either way.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I’m sorry, but the idea that Japanese Cartoon is somehow karmic revenge for hipsters “ironically” enjoying rap is just stupid. Firstly, those demos don’t sound anything like current (or even older ) indie rock, so why would hipsters take offense?
Secondly, even if Japanese Cartoon sampled No Age, hipsters wouldn’t take offense–they’d love it. If you haven’t noticed, hipsters like it when rap artists sample or reference them–it validates them. Remember when Kanye samped Peter Bjorn and John on a mixtape? Pitchfork couldn’t stop talking about it.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Brandon: Damn, I didn’t even remember that Shop Boys post until you mentioned it. Or the Shop Boys for that matter. I’m sure Lupe actually thinks this is cool though, didn’t he want to reunite Pink Floyd for a track?
Daniel: keeping in mind the whole post’s a joke, (Lupe came out and admited he doesn’t even sing on these though I don’t know if I’m supposed to believe him…), hipsters love when they’re aknowledged, not misrepresented: Kanye+PB&J=all good in their book but if Lupe were to do his best Oasis immitation and the media were to call it indie there’d be hell to pay.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Hmm… part veiled racism, part awkward class/race differences. Whites’ attitudes to rap are complicated. I was driving my little sister somewhere a couple weeks ago, and she was making me listen to that terrible Kevin Rudolf f. Lil Wayne song. So Mr. Rudolf goes, after Wayne’s verse, “I wish I could be as cool as you/and I wish I could say the things you do.” And my sister says, “aww, he wants to be as cool as Wayne! But he can’t because he’s white!” And I feel like a lot of white appreciation of rap is like that (which is probably part of why I’m so dismissive of white underground rappers). But on the other hand, implicit in this “they’re cooler than us” notion is, in some cases, a “they’re cooler than us because they’re ignorant and fun and stupid.”
January 8th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Parappa the Rapper is awesome. That’s all I have to say.
“Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind!”
January 8th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
This post is hilarious! great job!
Sach you’re on point, if this shit was taken seriously and considered “indie” hipsters would choke on their sparks.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
i think this may be relevant to the convo: any1 heard diplo’s mixtape w/ paper route recordz?
January 9th, 2009 at 12:18 am
One thing though. That picture of frat douche and sororo-sluts undercuts your hipster attacks…there are a million pictures of skinny Animal Collective fans looking just as absurd
January 9th, 2009 at 2:27 am
Granted I’ve been away from college for a month, but that’s not what I recall our frat douches and sororo-sluts looking like. Those folks look more like independent state school trash. And everyone’s heard the Paper Route mixtape, and I think I know where you’re going, and I have to say, I think Diplo’s taken a lot of unfair knocks for, you know, colonializing these bammers’ music or whatever. Obviously they didn’t record a ton of new material for the tape, so he remixed their best songs from a year ago and exposed them to a wider audience. I think the remixes are just fine. But of course everyone wants to be a cultural critic and subject the venture to some close reading. Whatever.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:00 am
soderberg: i understand what you’re saying, and i can see how people who like crystal castles could find something to love in southern rap (which, to be clear, wasn’t particularly the kind of rap i was referring to as “dimwitted”), but what i’m saying is that if one can listen to something really virtuosic as far as rock goes, if you’re listening to some super-simple rap song with one-syllable rhyme schemes and casio presets, it comes across to outisders as ironic appreciation.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Music is music.
All this talk about “ironic appreciation” and “whites wishing they were cooler” is blatant over-analysis of the situation. Not everyone wants to listen to, I dunno, Radiohead all the time. A terrible Kevin Rudolf f. Lil Wayne song can just be a simple guilty pleasure similar to a health nut eating donuts once a week.
Veiled racism?! Seriously?!
October 9th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I think I went to school with that girl.