Chromeo
< author: g booker >
Chromeo’s “She’s In Control” was a pleasure when it came out a few years ago, a slice of relectropop that evoked fond memories of classics such as Zapp and “Dirty Mind” era Prince. The only lingering discomfort was uncertainty as to whether they were genuinely having fun, like, say, Hot Chip, or snarkily making fun in the vein of indie racist icon Har Mar Superstar. Ultimately, I figure Chromeo wouldn’t make such infectious singles without some real love for the material, even if they don’t know it. They deliver their second album on Vice Records, “Fancy Footwork,” on July 24. In the meantime, listen to their old club banger “Needy Girl” and find yourself humming it for a day or two.
Chromeo - Needy Girl | mp3 |
External Links
Chromeo
Chromeo Myspace
Vice Records
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:14 pm
“indie racist icon Har Mar Superstar”
how is har mar racist? i am being serious, i have no idea.
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:16 am
this could be another of several examples where i look too deeply into things and excavate themes that aren’t there.
har mar primarily is marketed to and listened to by an indieish crowd that happens to be predominately caucasian. his image apes r&b lovermen who tend to be black, and it carries a sense of self satisfied parody, despite his insistences that he is completely sincere. it is hard to feel he isn’t winking at an audience that doesn’t listen to r&b and finds it ludicrous, and he is making a spectacle of confirming that generalization and mocking it.
something is just viscerally racist and insulting about har mar superstar to me. maybe i’m just tripping.
May 4th, 2007 at 2:03 am
Isn’t it more racist to claim that simply because more black people listen to R and B than white people, and more white people listen to indie than black people, that this means that to mock R and B would be to be mocking black people? I mean, I feel like if I suggested that hating Britain really means you are hating white people because it is a nation predominantly of white people, that would be pretty racist of me for ignoring the black minority in Britain and suggesting that things are defined by the racial majority within them.
Though maybe i’m not making any sense.
May 4th, 2007 at 9:17 am
i know, its murky waters. it would in fact be racist to suggest that r&b represents black people as a whole or something like that. it is possible to mock the more ridiculous aspects of r&b without being racist.
it gets really sticky when you start talking about gut feelings, because they are difficult to defend and more often than not end up revealing the favored prejudices of the gut owner. anyway, my gut really feels that har mar’s spectacle comes from a place that is a touch racist.
the interaction between har mar and his audience has just made me feel queasy and uncomfortable every time i have seen him. har mar claims to be sincere, but is obviously engaged in parody, which the audience laps up all too eagerly. and there is a lot that’s funny about it on the first level.
“he’s adopting the persona of something he doesn’t look like.” holy fucking zombie jesus, what an ironist. no, james, it is not automatically racist for a white person to mock something more popular with black people. it would be racist for a white person to suspend objective judgement on something because its more popular with black people.
so maybe i should just leave har mar alone, but i can’t get around the fact that something personally pisses me off about him, and i would be dishonest not to express that, even if i’m coming from a place that is completely left field or this has more to do with my own issues than anything else.
i like r&b. i used to work at dj’s and would listen to it for most of every day. i don’t understand and am a little bit offendend when i sense that r&b is completely dismissed as a legitimate genre, which it is (i remember one of my first brushes with this blog was writing a nasty response to jerome’s editorial that was all about deriding r&b).
it is carried so far that it goes beyond the glut of commercialized, pre packaged pretty plastic doll singers that are always going to be around, to visionary, high quality artists getting dismissed because of their genre.
then har mar, with sub boy band music and a thick, unsubtle schtick, is somewhat embraced by an audience that largely doesn’t have the time of day for what he is referring to in his act.
i’m going in circles so i’m going to stop for now, but suffice it to say, the times i’ve seen har mar, something has felt very wrong about being in that audience.