So, how DE Shaw managed through this hedge fund mess?
 

He's a visionary, except for the fact he has no musical credibility at all. Typical academic pretending to be "down" with the homies.
 

Rich,

Not sure what your point is. West has now produced a second album that no one will listen to. So what?
 

Ummm...Anon 2, seeing as how Cornel West grew up in a middle- to lower-middle class family, and went to Harvard on scholarship, as well as working two jobs while he was there, and actually is black, I don't exactly see how CW wouldn't be down with the homies. I'm not even sure what that means. But I'm pretty sure it's stupid.

Will anyone listen to West's album? Well, probably about as many as read a typical academic book. Maybe a few more. Not sure that's the point, though, really.
 

"I don't exactly see how CW wouldn't be down with the homies."
He's too old! And he's not the Rolling Stones, who are universally acknowledged not to have grown up. It's undignified, and it's probably lousy.
Sitting Duck
 

I'm sorry, but attaching some deeper cultural signifigance and respect to 50 Cent is as ridiculous as giving the same to, say, Blink 182. Just because something makes the radio or regular play in the clubs doesn't mean it deserves scholarly inquiry. It might hold some value for research looking at a whole area or "snap shot" of popular culture at a given time. But respecting either 50 Cent or Blink 182 as meaningful contributors to some deeper-meaning national discourse is absurd. If it makes people dance or makes them look hard, they do it. The only thing 50 Cent has ever done that's worth scholarly attention is make it acceptable to start a sentence with a number. Yet to hear West speak of him, he's a crucial standard bearer to be followed closely, as if a panel of professors focusing on 50 Cent should be considered laugable.
 

That should have been "shouldn't be considered laughable." Sorry. And I realize that seemed off topic at first - I was going by something I read where West was talking of his work in the context of other important hip-hoppers like 50.
 

First, as everyone knows, the only pop music worth paying high academic attention to is....Crowded House! (Just kidding.)

Rich, you're delving into treacherous waters rejecting the idea that Cornel West, an academic, from a middle-to-lower income family, who went to Harvard on a scholarship, and held two jobs there, and is black, might not be "down with the homies." I don't think you get it. 50 Cent and Snoop Dog earned their current respectability the old-fashioined way -- by being thugs (or at least doing a good approximation). In other words, they have street cred. CW may have the most street cred of any Ivy League prof out there, but that's not just saying very little, that's saying exactly nothing. The Ivy League and "the street" have nothing to do with each other, their mutually contradictory in fact, much as someone like CW would like to pretend otherwise. Don't call something stupid just because you don't agree with it (especially if you don't even understand what's being asserted). You like CW, its in your interest to promote the idea that he's a legit academic -- and so be it. But "down with the homies"? Sorry. He's down with the homies the way Norman Mailer was down with the ex-cons -- they're a figment of his scholarly imagination.
 

To 4:25, here's what CW actually says of 50 Cent:

"I'm not trashing 50 Cent and Snoop. I'm challenging them in a loving way. We can be more engaging and responsible in our work and our art."

I.e. he is trashing them or, radically differing with and distancing himself from them in terms of the real or virtual gangster aspects of the genre, hardly "respecting" them. I imagine the only really good (if any) aesthetic parts of the CD will be Prince, and some others maybe -- hip hop's not really my thing, but I think Richard is right to applaud CW's pedagogical aims, which emerge well from the article. He'll reach some people, maybe some outside the middle and lower-middle class who turn up to places like Princeton. The enterprise itself has merit.
 

What you said, and how you said it, just proves my argument.