Monday, December 30, 2013

BRAD PASILEY'S AWKWARD HIP-HOP MOMENT


SWINGING STRIKE

Brad Paisley accidentally reaches beyond his wheelhouse on Wheelhouse


by Matt Ashare |  
Posted April 24, 2013

Brad Paisley's a country music mega-star who's never shied from what tend to pass for bold statements in a rather conservative genre. He made characteristically breezy plea for unity and acceptance on the title track of his 2009 album, "American Saturday Night," which turns a typical night on the town into an opportunity to enjoy a multi-national coalition of sensual delights, from a French kiss and an Italian ice, to some Canadian bacon on a pizza pie, to a couple of bottles of Corona and Amstel Light. And, on the same album, he waxed hopeful in "Welcome to the Future," a song that enjoys the shock of the new (video chatting), while digging into the more troubling past by alluding to the struggles of civil rights activists Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. ("From a woman on a bus/To a man with a dream. . .).
       He followed that up, in 2009, by retrenching to a degree on "This Is Country Music," which I initially mistook to be a compilation of contemporary Top 40 Nashville hits in the vein of the "Now That's What I Call Music," a long-running franchise of blockbuster singles collections that hit 45-and-counting in February of this year. Instead, "This Is Country Music" served as a vehicle for the white-Stetson'd Paisley to reaffirm his southern roots in the rollicking anthem "Old Alabama," as in "Forget about Sinatra or Coltrane, or some ol' Righteous Brothers song. . . Play some back-home, come-on music that comes from the heart."
       As anticipation grew for the mid-April release of Paisley's 8th studio album, there were mixed signals. The disc's title, "Wheelhouse," seemed to suggest that Paisley was content remaining within the bounds of a particular comfort zone that's served him well, a place where smartly crafted, amped-up, arena-ready country-rock intersects clean-cut American romanticism. But, despite the fact that the disc's first teaser single came with a title that suggested an advertising campaign for a particular brand of whiskey-based liquor, the song, "Southern Comfort Zone," heads off in somewhat surprising direction. "No everybody drives a truck, not everybody drinks sweet tea/ "Not everybody owns a gun, wears a ball cap and jeans" he croons crisply on the opening verse. "Not everybody goes to church or watches every Nascar race/Not everybody knows the words to 'Ring of Fire' or 'Amazing Grace.'"
       Paisley concedes, on the chorus, that he misses his Tennessee home. But, as he puts it, "I can't see the world unless I go outside of my Southern Comfort Zone." At a time when pundits and politicians are all to willing to exploit Red State/Blue State tensions in polarizing debates over issues that the majority of Americans appear to agree on, it's a song that makes an earnest attempt to cut through some of the innate stereotypes that can, and often do cloud civil discourse. Hats off for that to Paisley, who's also been willing to tackle the prickly issue of gender roles, in "The Pants" from "American Saturday Night," and again on "Wheelhouse" by delving into domestic violence from the woman's point of view in "Karate."
       Unfortunately, when people start paying close attention to what your songs are about, then what your songs are about takes on a whole new meaning. And, whatever good a tune like "Southern Comfort Zone" may or may not be able to accomplish, has largely be overshadowed by the controversy surrounding another track on "Wheelhouse," a country-rap collaboration that pairs an earnest Paisley with form hip-hop heavyweight champ, and current "CSI New York" crimefighter LL Cool J. It's called "Accidental Racist," which is sorta where the problems start. And it finds Paisley getting in character as a humble country boy who makes the innocent mistake of walking into an upscale Starbucks (her loves product placement) sporting a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt festooned with the Confederate flag.
       In all fairness, it would be a fairly innocuous, if somewhat overly long track about the cultural baggage we sometimes forget we're carrying around with us, if it for LL's rap, which is as clumsy as the title. Paisley makes a few missteps — "I try to put myself in your shoes and that's a good place to begin," he suggests, "But it ain't like I can walk a mile in someone else's skin." But, mostly he's wrestling with "being caught between southern pride and southern blame," with "the old can of worms" he's unwittingly opened by wearing a Skynyrd shirt. And, while that might be insensitive, I'm not sure it really counts as racism.
       In any case, the sticking point in "Accidental Racist" — the part that's incited quite a bit of critical hand-wringing; a thoughtful, if largely irrelevant NPR essay on "The History of White Southern Musical Identity"; a "USA Today" headline that asks if the song is an "Epic Fail"; and an hilarious "Colbert Report" bit that I'll get back to shortly — centers around the rap portion of the program. Specifically, when LL, who doesn't exactly exude street cred, takes on the role of the offended barista and enters the fray with insights like this: "Just because my pants are saggin' doesn't mean I'm up to no good"; and "You don't judge my doo-rag/I won't judge your red flag/If you don't judge my gold chains/I'll forget the iron chains."
       As Stephen Colbert bemusedly pointed out, "Now, that's a pretty good deal. . . LL will forget 250 years of enslavement, if you accept his taste in accessories." So, yeah, that is kind of a tough sell. Some critics have suggested that Paisley would have been better tapping a rapper with more contemporary relevance than LL, or, better yet, any number of young southern rappers. But, I'm not sure that would solved the problem, which is that, for all its good intentions, "Accidental Racist" just isn't a particularly good song — it's laconic, it drags, and the soft-focus melody just doesn't have the stick-to-your-ribs quality that ground Paisley's better compositions. And, frankly, mainstream music never been a particularly good medium for addressing racism head-on. I'm thinking of Neil Young's stinging "Southern Man," which prompted an answer from Lynyrd Skynyrd in the form of "Sweet Home Alabama," with its pointed retort, "I hope Neil Young will remember/Southern man don't need him around anyhow." Of course, a friendship between Young and Skynyrd ensued, so it worked out in the end.
       Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney struck gold 1982 with their unforgettably treacly duet "Ebony and Ivory," but that only addressed what was already apparent at the time: that artists, and musicians in particular, were well ahead of the curve when it came to dealing with issues of race, largely by playing music together and not by writing songs about it. So, maybe the real lesson here isn't that Paisley, perhaps admirably, took a swing and missed with "Accidental Racist," that it's simply, if somewhat ironically, outside of his wheelhouse. It's that racism in America is too complicated, too nuanced, too difficult an issue for even a six-minute country-rap song to sort through. As one reader framed it in a posted online response to the "USA Today" story, "It's an impossible to tackle entirely effectively in one song." LL seems to get it: he brought Paisley on board for one of the tracks from his soon-to-be-released album “AUTHENTIC.” It’s hip-pop romantic balled called “Live For You,” and it’s streaming on SoundCloud. 

No comments:

Post a Comment