Passing

343. AC/DC, "Back in Black"
Produced by Mutt Lange; written by Brian Johnson, Angus Young, and Malcolm Young
Atlantic 3787 1980 Billboard #: 37

"Metal"--what does it mean? In retrospect, it seems as if we talked about "metal" because hard rock stood at a crossroads: between the blues revival of the 1960s and the rap-rock blends that came later. And this track lives at those crossroads: the choruses are just about a blues riff, a hook that the band can settle into, but the verses (like the verses of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" a few years earlier) walk along the path that leads from the blues to rap. To a surprising extent, this track covers the history of late twentieth-century African American music--and it's by a white guy. Go figure.

And the Children Shall Lead

678. LADY SOVEREIGN, "Random"
Produced by Ad-Rock, Ceri Evans, and Medasyn; written by L. Harman & G. Olegavich
Casual 015 2005 Did not make pop charts

679. LIL MAMA, "Lip Gloss"
produced by Famliar Mindz; written by F. Crumm, N. Kirkland, and E. Serrano
Jive 707519 2007 Did not make pop charts

If you buy the myth as presented in the standard histories (and particularly in 8 Mile), hiphop is supposed to be egalitarian. In the myth, anyone can step up to the mike and take their shot. In reality, though, the newest figures in hiphop seem almost as manufactured as the ones in pop.

These two singles, though, are exceptions. Honestly, they're two of my favorite debuts in hiphop ever. Both rappers were barely old enough to vote when they laid down these tracks, and both songs still bear the mark of schoolyard taunts. But if rap really is just an extension of the dozens. just a showdown that's won on pure verbal or rhythmic facility, then these two young women could probably take on most challengers. The soi-disant vertically challenged S-O-V from Chalkhill takes down Chingy, J-Kwon, and Chris Bridges in short order. And my fellow Brooklynite? She takes down the principal, just by wielding (as the original Buffy Summers once referred to her most innate superpower) her keen fashion sense. She poppin.

Sprechen Sie Popp?

199. NENA, "99 Luftballons"
Produced by ; written by
Epic 04108 1983 Billboard # 2

200. FALCO, "Rock Me Amadeus"
Produced by ; written by
A & M 2821 1986 Billboard # 1

Maybe it was MTV (which took American pop stars a bit by surprise), maybe it was the decadent phase of the Cold War, but the 1980s was probably the peak of Europop in the United States. In widely circulated English versions, one of these singles made the top of the charts, the other almost did, but both songs also got a fair amount of stateside airplay in their original versions. Originally, both songs were cut, not in German, but in a breathlessly wonderful Deutschlish patois that spat American culture back across the Atlantic in that sweet love-hate manner that elder European nations tend to adopt when regarding their bratty younger sibling.

They may have hated our politics back then (heck, many of us hated "our" politics back then), but they loved our music. In the early 1980s, just as white Englishmen were much less self-conscious about singing soul than their American counterparts, white Germans were much less self-conscious about attempting rap. As all these words spewed out of their mouths, Nena and Falco both charmed their Anglophone listeners in part because they seemed to have no idea how precariously they teetered on the brink of parody. In both cases, I think speaking in German helped: everything sounds just a little bit more hardedged when you're bringing those blended consonants up from the back of the throat.

Drunk & Unsure White Men Gotta Do What Drunk & Unsure White Men Gotta Do

258. BIG & RICH, "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy"
Produced by Paul Worley; written by Big Kenny & John Rich
WEA 6501 2004 Billboard # 56

259. STREETS, "Fit but You Know It"
Produced and written by Mike Skinner
Locked On 679L071CD1 2004 Did not make pop charts

These two singles mark the moment when I found it finally undeniable, almost thirty years after Sugarhill Gang, that rap had gone mainstream. The only thing whiter than country musicians are pasty-faced Brits, for whom calling a woman out on her spray tan is the ultimate form of drunken irreverence. Both groups, though, are out of their element: Big & Rich in a northern city, possibly New York, and the Streets on holiday somewhere. And so, like legions of drunk and unsure white men before them, they decide to emulate the black men they've heard and seen in popular culture as a way of acquiring courage. They do it in their own way, though, and the results are hilarious--on purpose, I think. We're laughing with them, not at them, right? You can't exactly say that either of these groups has (ahem) flow, but you have to love the self-consciousness with which they wield their newfound mackdaddy personae.

Who Would You Sit Next to Fred Durst?

121. EMINEM, "The Real Slim Shady"
Produced by Jeff Bass, Mark Bass, & Eminem; written by Tom Coster, Mike Elizondo, Marshall Mathers, & Andre Young
Interscope 497334 2000 Billboard: # 4

I don't believe that true subversion is really possible. Ever since I read Raymond Williams' essay on base and superstructure in Marxist thought many many years ago, I've pretty much subscribed to the idea that the only dissent that can appear in a given society is the dissent that the dominant ideology of that society allows to appear. Capitalist culture works through competition more than stability. That means that challenges to what may appear like the dominant order are merely the ways in which the dominant order readjusts itself to slightly shifting conditions. For more on this in late twentieth-century U.S. culture, read Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool or the brilliant collection Commodify Your Dissent, which collects essays Frank and others wrote for The Baffler back in the 90s.

On the one hand, this attitude might lead you to dismiss anyone who presents themselves as an alternative to the dominant culture as a poser, or to say that all good bands become talentless sellouts the second they move to major labels. (Mr. Azzerad, your table's ready.) For me, though, this attitude frees me up to appreciate the little rebellions that occur, the tiny acts of challenge that can help dismantle minor cultural systems.

Which is why I love this song. Yes, Eminem's oeuvre is rooted in a great deal that is mainstream and possibly toxic about pop music culture, but this is the song that shouted j'accuse at MTV. The dude bit the hand that fed him. He called out the channel for the hypocrisy of censoring some of his songs while selling clear intimations of sex under the guise of grinning ex-Mouseketeers and suggestions of bestiality under the guise of wacky prop comedy. And they gave him an award for it, and let an army of hims march on the very awards show that the song mocks, cutting the camera to the performers he makes fun of on the lines in which he makes fun of them.
If, a la Williams, this means that Mr. Mathers is in a way responsible for the decline of music videos on the channel and the rise of all those reality dating shows, then admittedly he may have a few things to account for. But if he helped, even a little bit, to knock TRL off the far too powerful perch it held in the pop world ten years ago, then bravo for the kid from 8 Mile.