Fair point. What’s the difference?
(I’m marking first year Uni essays at the minute, sorry everyone!)
Curious about how you determine ‘used’ here. Skating to hip-hop tracks? Wearing Polo? Generally enjoying hip-hop? What’s wrong with that?
Do you reckon white people listening to hip-hop is cultural appropriation or something? Should Eli have used white rock music in that video? Or maybe just for the white guys?
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The former makes it sound a lot like you’re suggesting these people wanted to exploit hip-hop culture, rather than were/are fans.
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Look forward to seeing it, footage looks bangin
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Yes, there is an element of cultural appropriation going on. I don’t think it’s bad thing in this instance. But you have a middle-class kid secretly(?) videotaping various rappers at a college radio show and then using it in a skate video. Zoo York also build their whole aesthetic around graffiti and hip-hop. Which is again a good, interesting thing, but Gesner was able to do this because of his connections and social capital he had. It would be interesting to focus on his role as a cultural mediator in all this and whether his background gave him an advantage. Maybe the doc does all this, I should probably just shut up and watch it.
I feel similar about the Beastie Boys, who I love. They were all from liberal, middle-class New York backgrounds. They could immerse themselves in NY music and youth culture when they were adolescents with less risk than people from less privileged backgrounds.
Also I think there’s a big element of cultural appropriation to skate culture generally. Companies steal logos from whichever big company but also will use music without proper attribution etc. It’s what makes skating interesting.
Definitely not secret, and the rappers signed it all off at the time. That was Stretch and Bobbito’s college radio show, and where the skaters would hang out and there’s been so much said for so many years about how the rappers were so into what skateboarders were doing that nobody needs to go into it here.
Eli’s ‘connections’ were his friends, and his ‘social capital’ was his enthusiasm. He’s also said many times, including here, about how his liberal arty background gave him a massive head start with everything he wanted to do in his life.
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Stretch and Bob’s show being secretly filmed as some covert act of cultural appropriation is a hilarious thought. They used the same/similar footage in their own documentary about the show, which you should also watch.
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S+B actually used footage from Mixtape, haha
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I got into Hip Hop via skating and smoking weed. For me Mixtape was that ‘fuck yes!’ moment when two of my favourite things ever were meshed into a single video. And it was fucking ace. And I could do the third fave thing whilst watching it (smoking btw).
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Pretty sure that didn’t happen, they all knew each other.
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I thought Mixtape didn’t get a re-release due to the difficulty with, or problems that could arise from clearing or not clearing samples used in the instrumentals that were freestyled over. I could be wrong though.
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Yeah, exactly. Even some split-second, pitched-up, barely-audible sample in the footage needed cleared. That’s all from the original publisher though, and obviously not Busta or Meth or whoever.
Same issue with ATSAS, which led to Large Prof remaking a lot of Illmatic without samples, with real instruments.
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Any chance to ever see Mixtape released on DVD some day?
Zoo’s lawyers will never let it get re-released. It’s a licensing nightmare. We went out and got all the rappers and skaters and everyone to give us the OK to use them, but then our lawyers were like ‘What about the music everyone is rapping over?’ I mean, we don’t even know what half that stuff is.
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Looks like this is on preorder now on iTunes
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Available from today.
CMOAC: The ‘thank yous’ at the end are in alphabetical order so I’m next to Madonna. 
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Cool thing to work on. What did you do?
I invented hip-hop, would you believe! I always have to do these things. People tend to think it was somebody else, but nah. That was my idea.
That and some press stuff, and digging out photos.
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You are Chad Muska and I claim my five pounds.
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there is a UK premiere/screening at dalston roof garden on 4th Oct
cant wait to see it - looks so sick
