Tricia Rose

Tricia Rose Time Interview

Some Things I Understand

The interview was not hard to understand. I definately grasped most of the material. Rose makes several key points regarding the culture of hip-hop, how it has changed, and why. Her main arguement is that "fans and detractors alike have advanced illogical, dishonest and offensive arguments about why the genre is bad and why it's great."

Furthermore, I can understand how Rose analyzes the complexity of the genre, and how mainstream media has developed its own ideas of what it means. She highlights all of the difficulty in producing music that supports the "richness" of the original hip-hop cultures. Instead(there are) idea(s) "that a certain kind of sexual deviance or violent behavior defines black culture has had a huge market in commercial mainstream culture for at least 200 years. Also, sexist images, which hip-hop has a lot of, seem to do very well across the cultural spectrum. So sexuality and sexual domination sell. Racial stereotypes sell." It is in this piece of Rose's interview that the complications of the genre are highlighted.

Some Things I Don't Understand

"There seems to be the tendency, when people complain about what they hear on the radio, for artists to say, "Well, if you don't like it, just turn it off." There's that shift in responsibility from artist to fan. Is that a disingenuous defense?"

This quote was not something I did not understand but it was something that I had to read twice just to make sure that I understood not only the vocabulary in the context, but how the question fit into the rest of the interview's main arguement.

Connections to other course themes

- This is much like our original assumptions about class. It sets hip-hop up as a foreign entity, or an "alien life form"

-Like Hine it has its own labels and vocabulary that had to develop much like the word of teenager

Comments-
This article was a light read, and definately easy for me to understand. I have seen Tricia Rose speak here at school, and after hearing her, her voice came through her interview with clarity and strength.