LIGHT TRAFFIC

I was recently reminded of a pleasant time, in the not-so distant past, when liking Kanye West’s music didn’t feel like such an effort. I do get the point that hip-hop must be liberated from stylistic constraints and set free if it is to avoid going the way dodos and Tacos-flavoured Doritos went, but really? What do you do when Kanye starts sounding like Cher and everybody’s all excited about experimenting with heavy-metal guitar instrumentals? You either get with the program, numbing the part of your brain that actively rejects all this lo-fi, ironic-hop, left-field, baile-funk, glamour favela-flavoured, auto-tuned, vocoder-laced junk. Or, like my friend Corinne told me this week, turning all angel-of-the-apocalypse on me,  you turn the dial back a couple years and get old. “This is how it happens,” she told me, dispassionate. “You just stop getting all the new stuff the kids are listening to.”

I’d like to see how the situation evolves before deciding whether my allegiances lie with the candy-colored print hoodied, shutter-shades flaunting posse or with the old-school hip-hop conservationists. Let’s just say that for today, I’m feeling the ’06 a lot more than the ’09.