Age, Race, Music, and Canada-US Tensions
[Note to readers: I am taking a day off from immersing myself in the ongoing insanity of US politics. Instead, I decided to write about an issue that has somewhat less political valence than most topics. As the first half of the column below demonstrates, however, "somewhat" is not even close to "none."]
OK, but why would that be relevant to a bunch of Canadian law students enrolled in "US Tax Law for Canadian Lawyers"? As almost everyone -- but not literally everyone -- reading this column surely knows, Kendrick Lamar is American (from Compton) and Drake is Canadian (from Toronto). What I wanted to know was how Canadians in their mid-20's felt about the beef. That was interesting in its own right, but it was a bit mischievous on my part because I knew that Kendrick had won the showdown by universal acclimation, with the final blow coming in front of a record audience for his halftime show at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
I was, therefore, an American asking a group of Canadians what they thought about an American clobbering a Canadian in humiliating fashion in front of the entire world. Maybe "mischievous" understates what I did there.
I should say, however, that this was before the now-roiling tensions between the two countries had begun in earnest. At that time in early February, Canadians were still mostly brushing off Trump's talk about annexing the Great White North to turn it into "a great and cherished 51st state" (as he now puts it, using language that is disturbingly reminiscent of domestic abusers), and he had also suspended his threatened tariffs.
So only five weeks ago, the situation between Canada and the US was quite different, and the stark contrast today can be seen everywhere. In the nearly two years that I have been living north of the border, I have had occasion to write about patriotism in the Canadian context exactly once. In a Verdict column published shortly after the election, I discussed the possible limits on the kind of good neighborliness that Canada's Margaret Atwood depicted in her classic The Handmaid's Tale:
I have only spent a bit more than a year up here, which means that I should be careful about making statements about “Canadian culture” or similar broad-brush reactions. Tentatively, however, I can say that Canadians seem not to embrace the kind of bravado-driven patriotism that is common in the U.S. People here certainly love and are proud of their country, but it seems to me to be a quiet kind of patriotism that is if anything understated.
Atwood’s depiction of her country thus strikes me as a perfect example of Canadian patriotism in the best sense.
What a difference a world-changing election makes! Suddenly, there are "Proudly Canadian" signs everywhere, boycotts of American goods, and very intense -- though still not bravado-driven -- expressions of national pride. Not even two weeks after the Super Bowl, Canada's glorious win on the ice over the US in the "4 Nations Face-Off" had taken on a level of importance that far exceeded even the usual very high standards of hockey obsession in this country.
How far? The best player in hockey history, Ontario's own Wayne Gretzky (aka The Great One), who has been extremely close to Trump, was recently lampooned by Canada's most-watched satirical TV news show, which asked: "Wayne Gretzky's the Great One, but is he a great Canadian?" That commentary even included a deliberate digression to trash Bobby Orr, another Canadian hockey icon (also from Ontario), for defending Gretzky: "So Mr. Orr, with the greatest of respect, suck it! Bobby, you packed off to Florida years ago. Go pound sand with the rest of the MAGA-loving Trump bootlickers who don't give a puck about this country anymore." That rant continued with a few more insults, accompanied by loud (and evidently surprised and delighted) applause from the audience.
Again, times are changing quickly. It is, therefore, important to put the Kendrick-Drake question in very specific context, because I suspect that the reaction up here would be a bit less polite now (but only a bit, given that this is still Canada). I can say that my students were not in the least bit interested in defending their countryman and seemed more embarrassed by him than anything else. That strikes me as very healthy, and it is something that I have consistently try to do with my own sports and pop culture heroes, whom I have always been willing to toss aside when they are exposed as being indefensible.
But let us leave aside the nationalist angle and turn back to that rap beef. I know almost nothing about rap -- so very close to nothing that I almost decided to google "Is there a difference between rap and hip-hop?" before writing this column, but I decided not to do so because it seemed more honest not to pretend to know more than I do. I of course do know and like a few random rap songs (or maybe they're hip-hop or something else?), including "Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground and Naughty By Nature's "O.P.P." (the latter of which most definitely does not refer to the Ontario Provincial Police). Those two songs happen to be from 1990 and 1991, but that does not in any way mean that I had a period in my younger days when I was even a little bit into rap. It is simply that those songs have been around long enough that they had enough time to cross my radar screen (in 2024 and 2012, respectively).
In any case, when I asked my students about the Kendrick-Drake smackdown, I admitted that I in fact only knew about this pop culture phenomenon because I happened to watch a video by Josh Johnson, a stand-up comedian (and "Daily Show" correspondent) who helpfully offered this primer a few months ago: "Drake vs. Kendrick Explained to White People." Johnson hilariously walked the audience through the entire story, stopping himself frequently to say, "For the White people in the audience, here's what that means. ..."
The students laughed appreciatively. After all, I am an older White guy who gives off zero vibes for being on the cutting edge of musical tastes. After class, however, I started to wonder whether it is the "older" or the "White" that better explains my near-total ignorance about rap music. After all, there are millions of White kids around the world (and by "kids" I mean anyone born after, say, 1970) who are completely into rap. It is also true, however, that an older Black guy would almost certainly know more than I do about this subject -- which is not to say that he would necessarily be a fan but would at least be much less likely to have been in the bubble that I have been living in.
When I was in my first year on the faculty at the University of Florida, one of my students surprised me by raising his hand and asking not about tax law but this: "Professor Buchanan, who is your favorite rap artist?" I had no idea. I think that the student was sort of hoping that I would say Vanilla Ice, but even I know better than that. I flailed and could not come up with an answer, which I concede was embarrassing, and afterward I began to think about how White my musical tastes are or are not.
To be clear, I have not been passive about this. I have on occasion tried and failed to get into rap, or at least to figure out a way to appreciate what makes it so popular. Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl show this year was widely hailed as a truly great (or near-great) performance, which I watched intently from beginning to end. Similarly, the Super Bowl halftime show in 2022 that featured not just Lamar but Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and some special guests was similarly widely agreed to have been an example of the heavyweights of all time at the very top of their games, even though some of them are by now in the rap equivalent of a senior citizens center. (Not that age has stopped The Rolling Stones, of course.) After watching that 2022 show, too, I came away scratching my head. People who seemed to know what they were talking about declared that it was not just good but the best of the best, and I simply missed it.
To be even more clear, my "I don't get it" reaction was neither angry nor disrespectful. I will not bother linking to the blizzard of negative social media commentary from the usual slew of Trump-aligned racists after Lamar's performance last month, but readers can certainly guess what that cesspool was like. Those race-baiting trolls asked questions like "Is that even music?" and made it clear that their objection was not to the music but to its association with not only Black people in general but with rap's defiance of White cultural supremacy.
By contrast, what I find interesting about my nonplussed reaction is that rap seems to me to be such a layered and self-reinforcing musical world that it might be all but impossible to come to the party late and know what is happening. To mention only one issue, I have never appreciated speedy lyrics in any genre ("One Week" by Barenaked Ladies being one frustrating example of a hit pop tune that drives me crazy), and a lot of rap songs that I have heard require the listener to be able to follow rapid-fire wordplay. I would love to understand it, but if I were to have any hope at all to reach the point of true appreciation for the genre (and to be able to distinguish between sub-genres), I suspect that it would take much more time than I have thus far been willing to set aside to get there.
Again, however, is my reaction because of the "old" or the "White"? Or both? There are plenty of musical genres that code as White that definitely leave me cold: thrash, death metal, soft rock, Christian rock, and so on. Ecchhh. And country. Double ecchhh. On the other hand, I absolutely love a lot of funk, from Nina Simone's proto-funk R&B to Stevie Wonder's good stuff (that is, songs like "Higher Ground," "You Haven't Done Nothin,'" and especially "Livin' for the City," not the treacly "Isn't She Lovely"-style part of his songbook) to Parliament Funkadelic and more. Also reggae, soul, and others. And when I wrote above that rap "might be all but impossible to come to the party late and know what is happening," that also describes much of classical music, especially opera, at least for me.
None of this matters, I suppose, but it is still a delight to be thinking about music -- even music that I do not know how to appreciate -- rather than continuing to track the end of the rule of law in the United States (and possibly the world as a whole).
In any event, I come to two tentative conclusions. First, I am living a relatively impoverished cultural existence by not having developed throughout my life the necessary foundations to appreciate musical genres that millions upon millions of people swear by. Second, although Josh Johnson understandably addressed his tutorial to White people, the cultural ignorance at play is probably more a matter of age than race, even though it is a lot of both.
And even though almost everyone reading this column knows much more about this than I do, they should watch Johnson's comedy set immediately. We all need a good laugh right now.