Good evening, friends.
I think I heard the phrase "slow your roll" tonight. If I heard correctly, it's one too many times. Without trying to sound too much like a scold yet cognizant that I probably do, I'm tired of "the roll," which I interpret to mean one's "m. o.," and its variants, as well as most other hip-hop inspired lingo of recent vintage. It's tired. In fact, forget tired: hip-hop, with maybe slightly more than a handful of exceptions, is dead. Even the good stuff is largely hidebound. And once Walmart becomes a vendor of one's cultural artifact, that artifact has entered another realm, one that I try to avoid.
I will not try to pretend that I'm a "thought and language" scholar. I know that one influences the other, and I'm still swamped in self-debate. I know that the two exist in symbiosis, so I'll start from there.
One thing quickly: I'm among the bigger jazz nuts you're likely to find. In the main, contemporary jazz sucks too, but the genre taken as a whole was viable for closing in on one-hundred years. Hip-hop imploded in less than twenty-five. To make my point brief: if you accuse me of racism, well, sir or ma'am, you've got three fingers pointing back at you, and I'm holding back. Would you really like to know what's on my mind? Again, I'm willing to entertain differing points of view.
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