WHITE PEOPLE DISCUSS HIP HOP
ISAAC MASON
If it wasn’t for the misogyny,
they agree, passing a lovely salad
down the board of polished oak,
a lot of it would be pretty listenable.
Their Spode or Wedgwood
chimes pleasingly
as someone observes
that the sampling,
the irregular modes of distribution
have destabilized our idea of music as
property or brand.
Another,
with crumbs of brie en croute
in his beard,
considers it a retreat
from ideology
and collective action.
You know,
compared to the sixties.
The hostess,
hugging herself to still
a shiver of satisfaction,
explains that many of the figures
of classical rhetoric can be discovered
in lines that might seem, at first,
off-putting.
Outside, in the exquisite garden,
the squirrels are beatboxing,
the hybrid tea rose
murmurs Kendrick Lamar.
