The Wonders of Globalization

So I met a new friend down on Sesame Street the other day, and this new friend thought it kindly of her to give me some new music. This was fortuitous for me because my hard-drive crashed over break and I lots all of my chill tunes. This new music fit nicely into the "chill tunes" category, until I was given a latel entry. I got one song from her that was described as "Swedish hip-hop." Now, I am not going to be that hip-hop historian who clarifies that hip-hop is a cultural phenomenon that most likely is not in full swing in Sweden, so I gave the track a try in hopes that I had found some new talent that the Swedes posessed besides churning out supermodels and building viking ships. What I found instead was a wonderful lesson in globalization.

I am sure the Swedes that made the track probably thought it was hip-hop. Or at least in the stylings of hip-hop. I give these guys some leeway here, but I still must hold it against them that they sound more like Crazytown than Run-DMC. This is no fault of the Swedes; they simply get what they get on MTV Europe and unfortunately that means ripoffs of Sublime songs where Swedish rock-rappers are singing about living in the LBZ and having to put a cap in the LAPD. What I realized from this little music exercise is that music is one of the must accessible bits of the global economy, and it has allowed for the spread of shitty music much more extensively than it has allowed fro the spread of good music. While KORN gets sold out in Tokyo and Athens, MF Doom still can't cut a break in the States. I mean, don't get me wrong, I went through my KORN stage in like...6th grade. That's who all of KORN's fans are, 6th graders. Kids who are just emerging into the social world of middle school but don't know what the hell to do with it besides wear black t-shirts and talk about how badass KORN is because their mom always takes the CD away. Mothers: KORN is about as dangerous as Cookie Monster. I think one of the guys in the band has like 200 kids or something. I saw it in a magazine.