Tag: Black Nerds

Weak Rappers Need to Step Off

This one is for all my XHTML/CSS heads out there:

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I hate to sound like a broken record on this one, but umm:

…the nerd who is possessed wholly of a black American masculinity is a specific character that enjoys a renaissance today even as the hip-hop world continues to project a cartoonishly grotesque opposite.
…the proliferation of media voices and sources enabled by the internet has allowed a more nuanced and less gangster voice of young black America to emerge untempered by market concerns and sensationalism.

When I originally wrote about black nerds, much of the backlash in the comments amounted to something like this: What are you talking about!? There have been black nerds forever!!; this despite the fact that I had made the same point in the piece. And while there were enough sane comments for a decent conversation to ensue, an email exchange with one of the ranters contained this gem, “I don’t think I fully read your article the first time.” SMH.

The thrust of the piece remains vital — that because of our more democratized communication tools we are beginning to see a more accurate depiction of black america. Mainly because that media is actually being created by, ahem, black people. But all of these things are articulated more succinctly by the SEO Rapper above, whose seamless integration of the swagger required of an MC with the pedantry of the digerati is too smooth for hypertext.

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Oh yeah, the industry’s onto his words on SEO and Social Media too.
Original link via startsnitching.

April 3, 2008
Soulja Boy's Superman Subversion

“Crank That” content occupies 5 of the top 100 YouTube videos. Advertising and Academia have written great articles and case studies about the Soulja Boy phenomenon. Even Disney let copyrights slide to join the party. Yup, it’s a new media coup.

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So…the line “Superman dat (h)o!” means? It aint just some nonsensical wordplay.

Last fall there was a flurry in the blogosphere about the lyrical ‘translation’, but it didn’t go viral, so the song and the artist have not been outcast by corporate America.

The song/dance has remixed past the point of authorial intent, so the fact that people age 6-66 are Cranking in the classroom and at halftime is not really a prob, just really funny. It’s another example of hip-hop subverting dominant linguistic paradigms while working within it. Like in 2003 how Dave Chappelle and Lil’ Jon had millions of Americans blindly saying Skeet Skeet. Or in the late 90’s when LL Cool J slipped a FUBU ad into the text of a Gap TV spot – LL says on camera “For Us, By Us, on the low”. It flew under the radar of both the client and the agency, whom I’m guessing just heard it as some cool urban lingo, not an encoded advert for their competition.

January 9, 2008
Clutch Magazine: Black Nerds

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Clutch Magazine thinks Raafi is one of 12 Black Men to Watch. At the office, we’ve noticed him striking camera ready poses:)

December 3, 2007
Black Nerds: a reprise

Editors Note: The below text is a follow-up to Raafi’s now-famous post about Black Nerds.
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Over the past couple months I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching over exactly what the word “nerd” actually means and found myself in a sort of Potter Stewart limbo. After all, blogging about what it means to be a nerd isn’t very cool, but I digress. My fragmentary notion that the black nerd is an emerging presence in our culture that is under-recognized has provoked many sorts of reactions from the vituperative (I see you Tai) to the laudatory. In the process the link has found its way into blogs at USA Today, MIT, and Ebony/Jet. The New York Times called to say wassup and just this week I appeared coast-to-coast on Canadian radio. Did I mention that Clutch Magazine thinks I’m a black man to watch? (I’ll mention here, in passing, that the Beastie Boys once recorded a song entitled “Hey Ladies!”).

(more…)

December 1, 2007
CBC: Black Nerds

on the remix well before it was hip

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation picked up on Raafi’s Black Nerds and interviewed him for Spark, their show about the intersection of technology and culture.

December 1, 2007
Agency Spy: Black Nerds, Planning & Parties

the party password is…

Agency Spy has a crush on Desedo, talking about our work, our writing and our parties. We’re all blushy, but you know we like it.

November 2, 2007
Linguistics and Codes of Cool

In the AICP show this year there were 3 award winning spots rooted in the idea of “White Kids acting Black”

1) Adidas “3 Courts” – White kid puts on special sneakers and can hop across 3 courts better than all them jumpity black kids.

2) Smirnof “Tea Partay” – The viral sensation of Vineyard preps rapping and rumpshaking.

3) Star Trek “Cribs” – Animated Trek characters on the YoYoYo Turntable tip.

Well, BFD, we’ve been milking black culture for ‘cool’ since before Charlie Parker played a note. (metoo) But it is the couterpointing of this slam dunking/hip-hopping definition of Blackness that caused Raafi’s essay about Black Nerds to go viral.

From the traffic, I was directed toward the work of Mary Bucholtz, a scholar of Nerditry at UCSB. She writes that white nerds typically eschew their peers’ aforementioned adoption of black style and slang. Mary also dips into how “Hollywood has long traded in jokes that try to capitalize on the emotional dissonance of [white] nerds acting black (Eugene Levy saying, ‘You got me straight trippin’, boo’) and black people being nerds [aka ‘acting white’] – like Steve Urkel and Carlton Banks.” All food for thought. Gritty like wheatgrass. Do click on the above articles to read more.

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douwantmore?
4/10/08: An article from San Jose about race, academia and cool.

October 9, 2007