Annoyance Rambles
I hate it when I meet someone on campus and they ooze this very superficial alternative trendyness. Do you know what I mean? It’s the art of being cool while pretending not to be cool. But you can’t be any type of cool. You have to be the alternative type of cool. You can’t like Britney Spears or pop music. You have to love a special distinct kind of underground hip-hop. You can’t spout big names like the Roots or J5 (which is pretty much all I know, haha) you gotta start talking about how Talib has some shit goin’ on with some producer because they disagree about down-tempo intelligent hip-hop with funk derived influences (or whatever).
These people mask their lack of real intelligence with alternative common sense. Things I’ve heard a lot are, “Yeah, I don’t like going to raves because it’s too mainstream ya know? That Paul Oakenfold guy sure messed things up. I mean I used to go when there were 2 map points and you had to craw through dirt and mud and slip a pill up some heroin addicts ass to find the party. Besides, everyone goes to raves now.” Upon further questioning, they admit they been to maybe three parties. And half of them were big heavily promoted parties that had flyers plastered in front of chemistry 101. and yeah, they ended up on the floor drooling and professing love for their homies while macking on a random girl.
It’s the same people that automatically gravitate toward away from what they conceive as “un-cool” music like trance (to further elaborate, trance is very popular in the european and US scenes, particularly because it’s easy for new people to like– very uplifting, catchy. basically the same qualities that eventually drives people away because of it’s mainstreamness within the subculture. they retreat to a cooler, smaller subculture such as drum n bass, then eventually dive even deeper into even more specific genres such as intelligent drum n bass or bristol or whatever genre people have invented recently).
I remember I was at this party in norcal, and I was groovin’ in the house room, and this girl walks up to me and says, “Hi, is this the jungle room?”
I’m thinking #1 she’s deaf because DJ sneak sure as hell doesn’t sound like jungle, but then things are explained when she exclaims, “This music is so cool!! Is this the jungle room? This is my first rave.”
I looked at her and said, “The drum n bass room is over there”
Her face fell as she realized she wasn’t in the cool room. I looked closer and I saw stickers emblazoned with “I love Jungle” on her pants. She was wearing cargo pants and wearing mostly olive clothing and she has a small triple 5 soul bag with nothing in it hanging in the natural look on her right side.
But back to my story. These people on campus sport the I don’t give a fuck look. As James said to me recently, if you think about it, the I don’t give a fuck look takes a long time to pull off. I mean you gotta wear multiple layers of thrift store clothing, some kind of natural hippy looking necklace made of shells or wood or whatever, you need to purposely mess up your cheap shoes so they look good, and you gotta mess up your long unkempt hair in a certain way (or wear one of those beanie hats or the cool knitted skull caps) or you risk looking like you tried too hard (so ironic isn’t it?).
Half of them claim to feel the music and half of them claim to be “working on DJing and mixing– and ya know? I’ve been playin’ around with fruity-loops.” A lot of them claim they attend spoken word sessions, even though they couldn’t stay awake through poetry sessions in high school english.
It’s not just the hip-hop heads, it’s everyone everywhere. It existed I remember for computer geeks back when I was in high school. Some kid would claim he knew how to program or something and me and a friend would totally put him in his place (being young made me more annoyed than I am now and more willing to embarass people).
People have a tendency to exagerrate when they meet someone, to make them sound cooler. I do it, you do it, everyone does it. 99% of the time, it works perfectly. The other 1%, i’m listening, and I laugh inside and talk about you to my friends.
