BRIAN COLEMAN: I’ve written for XXL, look at the people they put on the cover. I don’t wanna read those articles. Like I could really give a shit less what Lil’ Jon’s all about. That’s just me, maybe. But I find that’s a big crisis in where magazines are these days, the kind of articles that I think the editors want to put out. And maybe that’s just me being a curmudgeon. Jeff, what do you think about that?
JEFF CHANG: Well, see, I think that goes exactly to the crisis of identity. Part of it is a generational identity issue. A lot of folks like to refer to the ’80s as a golden age of hip-hop. I don’t think the golden age of hip-hop has ever ended since it began, but I think it says a lot about where folks are at these days. There is, in a sense, a developing gap between people that came of age during the ’80s and the ’90s, and the folks that are hip-hop’s fan base now. There’s a huge gap. And in fact part of what you hear, I think, is this complaint from older hip-hop heads that they’re not being served. I mean if you turn on the oldies station, you’re gonna hear ’70s stuff — late ’70s and early ’80s stuff — and its gonna be like Mary Jane Girls and, you know, Frankie Beverly and Maze. And I’m not dissing those guys — I like that music just as much as the next person. But you won’t hear Superlover Cee and Cassanova Rud or Naughty by Nature or Queen Latifah and MC Lyte, and it has to do with the fact that mass-media corporations are very fixated on the 18-to-24, 18-to-26 demographic. Once you hit your thirties you’re almost on your own. And by your mid-30’s you’ve gotta make a choice. If you’re not a baby boomer — ’cause baby boomers never had to go through this. But if you’re not a baby boomer you have to make a choice: are you gonna side with the kids, or are you gonna try to grow old and listen to Barry Manilow? I mean that’s the kinda bullshit that mass media makes. So part of what happens is you get this massive nostalgia for the golden age. And I think that that’s driving a lot of what’s coming out in the books these days. Me, personally, like I said, I think the golden age never ended. I’m just as thrilled by D4L’s “Laffy Taffy” and the Federation’s “18 Dummy” as I am listening to the older stuff. But I understand that I’m in the minority amongst people who are my age.
PHOENIX: Why isn’t there an oldies circuit for Run-DMC?
JEFF CHANG: ’Cause it’s black music, and that’s the way that America has always treated black music. I mean even with the oldies stations back in the day it was always the Four Seasons and never Chuck Berry. You know what I mean? It’s the kind of thing where all of us, as kids, had to go and seek this stuff out. We had to read our Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll to find out who Chuck Berry was or, god, Fats Domino or Louis Jordan, you know, all these guys that invented rock and roll. But you couldn’t listen to that stuff on the radio, except if you were living maybe in a largely African-American city. So I think that just has to do with the strain of racism of the institutions of America. And it’s always going to be under-appreciated. And it’s interesting, because TV has kind of taken the lead in the absence of that.
