Meredith Vieira's Exotic Hip Hop Adventure

Now, I know, I have talked about jet skis on this blog before, but a music video recently surfaced that is making me revisit this topic. Thanks, Internet, for making this clip readily accessible:

Previously, when I was talking about jet skis, it was in reference to what I claimed was a parody video mocking hip hop's expectations from Empire. The video in question was being made in support of Hakeem's veritable masterwork, 'Drip Drop,' and while I wasn't able to find any good clips from when they were shooting it with a green screen on a jet ski, you need to just take my word for it that this happened. There is more insight into the overall aesthetics of the 'Drip Drop' video later in the episode:

Earlier in the episode, Hakeem states that he wants to create a video that shows he is the heir apparent of Empire Records and that he feels like this message will be sent via a video filled with scantily-clad women and jet skis. I view this entire song as parody, particularly because it is so vapid (and so close to a generic Rihanna collaboration) yet so catchy. What makes it even more of parody is the fact that Hakeem thinks this image is what he needs to succeed in the family business. Meanwhile, up at Ghetto Ass Studios (which is an actual location in Empire), Hakeem's brother Jamal is recording a song from his heart, a song with meaning, a song that conveys his struggle as he attempts to distance himself from his disapproving father. Notably, it does not feature a green-screen jet ski video.

So if we can agree that Hakeem's video is demonstrating the profound shallowness of his character (and by extension, the generic hip hop song that he has just created), then what exactly are we to make of Meredith Vieira, who has taken almost all of the same tropes, only brought them to a day time talk show and therefore made them weird? First, let's identify what these tropes are:

1) Scantily clad women: a seemingly unending stream of them appears in Hakeem's video shoot. Meredith was apparently not ready to 'go there' (I feel like this was an actual note in some production meeting). So instead, she wore a t-shirt that projected the notion of a scantily-clad woman.

2) A green screen: on Hakeem's set, some random cameramen note that they expected to be in Miami filming Hakeem on a jet ski. Instead, they are stuck in New York, filming a jet ski in front of a green screen. If anything, this moment adds to the irony of Hakeem's assurance that this video will show him to be, in his own words, 'king' (also, you don't want to be king of an empire. You want to be emperor of an empire). Meredith notes that such videos should take place on the beach, but then goes to the green screen instead. This seems particularly ironic for a song entitled 'Going Down For Real' since they are getting down for fake.

3) Bling: Flo Rida and Hakeem share very similar watches. However, Flo Rida missed out on the gold chain. Instead, Meredith got the gold chain.

4) Intimations of a Strip Club: neither video is set in a strip club, although there are intimations of such. Hakeem is carefully evaluating the ladies and their various assets, which places him into the role of a consumer, much as he would be in a strip club. Furthermore, the raining gold in the backdrop turns the set into an enclosed area with low light. While Meredith is not in any way in a club, she is making it rain. While on a jet ski. With a t-shirt that projects the notion of a scantily-clad woman. I am not sure what to make of this. Also, I am not sure why you would want to make it rain on a jet ski. I don't think you're going to impress strippers with that kind of precipitation.

5) Dranks: both Hakeem and Meredith have champagne. Hakeem treats it in a more understated fashion, whereas Meredith is guzzling it down like it's the last bottle on earth. Have some decorum, Meredith.

6) A Bunch of Women Touching On the Artist: there are a number of these near the end of 'Drip Drop' touching on Hakeem. What Meredith is doing around 0:50 makes me slightly uncomfortable.

I'm not even going to talk about the fact that the two songs are not that far off in terms of style and content. You can just make of that what you will. If Flo Rida had done 'Drip Drop,' though, I have total faith that he would have been promoting it on Meredith's show. 'Going Down For Real' was featured prominently in Furious 7 during a scene steeped with overstated opulence in Abu Dhabi, although I would make a larger argument that the FF franchise basically takes hip hop tropes and pushes them to excessive extremes, much as it does with, well, everything. This is what happens when your movies co-star Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Vin Diesel.

In case you were curious, Wikipedia claims that the instrument used in the sample was not, in fact, an oboe.

This whole Meredith incident could be viewed as nothing more than a scene gone wrong or a tone-deaf segment (or really freaking funny because what just happened there, depending on your point of view), but I feel like Meredith's frenetic actions in it suggest that she is taking advantage of what is, for her, an 'exoticized' moment. She is placing herself in a world that is very distant to her, yet from her exhortations to 'Shake it' (and encouraging others to yell/shake the same?), she is momentarily attempting to join it.

That Meredith 'exoticized' Flo Rida's music is a bigger problem when considering who her audience is. I wasn't able to find any specific statistics about the demographic that watches her show, but from recent rumors that it is going to be canceled, some clues emerge: the network is looking for someone who draws a 'younger' and 'more multicultural' audience, which implies to me that Meredith's is primarily 25+ and white. Hip hop in general, then, is being conveyed to an audience that is not familiar with its conventions--unlike the viewers of Empire, who were more likely to know a parody when they saw it. What is the image that emerges here? This is a style that seemingly lacks deeper meaning, that can be reduced to its most overarching stereotypes; in other words, that can be summed up by a bikini t-shirt, bling, champagne and a jet ski. Even the actual video for 'Going Down For Real' is arguably more sophisticated as it features a women's basketball team facing off (I'll leave that as 'arguably,' since there is plenty of booty shaking too).

We're at a cultural moment when hip hop is being transformed into a larger means of dialogue across a broader audience. The runaway success of Empire as a prime-time soap reinvigorated by a fictional hip hop world was one sign, and I would argue that the wide-spread integration of hip hop culture into the Fast and Furious franchise is another. There is also the upcoming studio (!) film Straight Outta Compton, which (LET'S ALL HOPE) will portray the social conditions that led to NWA's album (ALLOW ME TO DREAM). In contrast--and contemporaneously--the Meredith segment represents hip hop as little more than its most basic and distancing tropes to an audience likely unfamiliar with the genre. I, for one, truly wish that Meredith had never donned that bikini t-shirt.

Drip Dropping the Music of 'Empire'

If you have not been watching FOX's 'Empire,' you may not know that one of the most integral elements of the show it its music. After all, it is the story of a hip hop label called Empire Records, one that was founded by the protagonist of the show Lucious Lyon, who you can see as a kind of fictional Jay-Z. Right now, his sons are battling over who will take it over; two of his three sons are also talented musically, while the third one feels left out of the family because he is not (unless it involves something called 'music therapy' where J-Hud sings to you or joining in for a trio of 'Lean on Me' in an elevator. If you aren't watching this show yet, I must ask WHY NOT???). As a result, we get a lot of songs on 'Empire.' Sometimes, these are songs being recorded in Ghetto Ass Studios, which is a real place in the Empire universe--in fact, to prove that the title is not just a nickname, they have recorded at Ghetto Ass Studios more than once. Sometimes, these songs are performed in the club, Leviticus, with family and friends and people who just signed record contracts with Empire and Rhianna-stand-ins named Tiana and random bystanders joining in:

In fact, 'You're So Beautiful' shows up a number of times on the show: Jamal (middle kid) alters the lyrics to publicly come out of the closet at the annual Lyon White Party (okay, maybe picture a blend of Jay-Z with Sean 'Puffy' Combs); we see Lucious singing the song to Cookie right before she goes to prison; and we even see Cookie consoling herself with the song while she is in prison, sans weave, sans animal prints, and sans heels (could this even be the same Cookie?):

Thanks for this screen capture go to Price Peterson, over at Yahoo, who has arguably the best 'Empire' recaps in all the land

'You're So Beautiful' is this feel-good hit, one that everyone in the Empire universe knows, and one that has clearly been around for at least seventeen years since that is when Cookie originally went to jail. It works as a feel-good song because it has that catchy chorus, with all credit due to Timbaland, who is writing the music for the show. This song is very much in the vein of Timbaland's number-one hit, 'The Way I Are,' which operates on similar catchy-chorus principles--except that 'You're So Beautiful' has better grammatical conceits.

But what is 'Empire''s 'best' song? I need to put that in scare quotes because it depends on how you want to evaluate that. Certainly, I would put 'You're So Beautiful' in the running because of its general all-around catchiness and its versatility for various key points throughout the show (e.g., coming out at a party, singing in the club with friends and family, pre-trial ballad, prison consolation song). But I'm going to make a controversial choice for best song of 'Empire' and say that, for me, it is unquestionably youngest son Hakeem's 'Drip Drop':

First things first: this is a terrible song on many levels. Please don't misunderstand me when I say it is 'Empire''s best. It is inane to a point where I might have to look through Kim Kardashian lyrics to find something worse. Just one screen capture from a video with the lyrics should help to demonstrate my point:

This cracks me up every time I look at it.

But I feel very confident that if 'Drip Drop' were recorded with the right combination of artists, it would be a giant hit. For is it any worse than Rhianna's 'Birthday Cake'? I would argue no (those of you who follow the blog would likely not be surprised by this, given my animosity toward 'Birthday Cake'). What I think 'Drip Drop' does is parody the exact kind of hit that we would expect from a Drake and Co., right down to the mandatory Rhianna-eseque appearance by Tiana. I would love for Lil' Wayne to drop by Empire Records and add a verse because I think it would fit perfectly, plus I have faith that he would find a way of parodying the parody and invoke toilets or something <-- NSWF link. Don't listen if you are easily offended. Not censored.

Let's move on to the the ridiculous video featuring ridiculous hip hop girls in ridiculous outfits, dancing around in a ridiculous manner. When Hakeem first presents the idea during an Empire board meeting (this company has the best freaking board meetings), he suggests using a green screen to allow him to be on a jet ski with several girls hanging off of it while singing the song--if you want a recap, the best can be found at Grantland. And what, I ask, could be more of a parody than a jet ski? It screams ostentation, unnecessary, and ridiculous. Perhaps that's why it was the favorite toy of Eastbound and Down's anti-hero Kenny Powers? <-- NSWF link. Don't watch if you are easily offended. You may need more context if you don't know the show. But it most certainly involves a jet ski. If you think of Hakeem as as hip hop's Kenny Powers, but with Jay-Z/Sean 'Puffy' Combs as his father, frankly his whole character starts to make much more sense.

Now there have been other songs on 'Empire,' arguably better songs. The most popular of these was likely Jamal's 'Keep Your Money,' which he recorded in response to Lucious cutting off his money (which all ties back to the fact that Jamal is gay, and Lucious is very much not okay with that). 'Keep Your Money' also benefited from Cookie's intervention, as the link demonstrates, as she walks in to Ghetto Ass Studios and offers her opinion about how the song should be mixed. 'Empire' is drawing on two common tropes here: the Empire is strongest when family members work together and the artists are at their best when they are speaking 'from the heart.' The first reduces the show to a cliché; as last week's episode demonstrated, this is a deeply broken family, one that can also be torn apart by these same characters when they are at their worst (things got all bordering on a V.C. Andrews novel). Cookie is trying to be the glue that holds them together, but she is also constantly hurt by the actions of those around her. Maybe she can fix a studio recording, but she hasn't been able to fix all of their problems yet.

As for the second conceit, that artists need to draw on their inner lives, this is certainly a thread that has permeated 'Empire.' In the show's opening scene, we saw Lucious in a recording studio, urging a young star to draw on her most painful memories to bring out the emotion in a song. Must we be so romantic, I ask? Must Jamal feel the pain of living in some non-gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn with tacky kitchen cupboards to find his voice in 'Keep Your Money'? Is this not simply reinforcing the notion that artist biography and output must be intertwined? Why can't we just 'drip drop' with Hakeem? The show seems to posit that 'Keep Your Money' was a breakout song for Jamal, one that cemented his reputation beyond the small clubs where he had previously been playing. Implicitly, its hit status grew because of its authenticity and its ties to Jamal's life. But I doubt that would happen in reality.

It's worth noting that in the week that FOX released 'Drip Drop' and 'Keep Your Money,' the latter was downloaded more than the former; however, I wonder if the fact that 'Empire' purposefully presented the former as verging on parody influenced this reaction. For my money, 'Drip Drop' still wins, simply because it so succinctly sums up a specific sound and ambiance that I expect to hear on the radio. Is it good as an artistic product? Not even I would claim that. Would it be popular? I suspect yes. Throw Lil' Wayne on that track and you'd have a hit song in no time.

The Lyon in Winter

When I first started watching Fox's breakout hit Empire, I will admit that I was mostly watching from the standpoint that this show was probably going to be bad, but in a good way (and I would argue that my delayed-live-tweeting of the pilot was an indication of my basic mindset. But I stand behind everything I said regarding Cookie's various hairstyles. I could probably write an entire blog post solely about Cookie's mid-90s Philly Blond Wig from tonight's episode). I did find the show intriguing enough to keep at it, and while I have not had the chance to watch it 'live,' I have been doing my best to stay current. I had heard rumors flying around that the most recent episode was particularly noteworthy and let me just echo that sentiment with a resounding 'YAAAAAAAAAAAAAS.' Because Empire kicked it up a notch this week to almost Kimberly-blew-up-the-apartment-Melrose-level crazy--stated with all due respect--and has proven itself to be a worthy heir of its primetime soap ancestors.

Let me start by taking a moment to acknowledge the direction of John Singleton for this episode (yes, that John Singleton who made Boyz N the Hood) and who, I think, really got what primetime soaps are supposed to be all about. This is over-the-top crazy ridiculous nonsense, in the most compelling and amazing way. Not to mention that there is no taking your foot off the gas in this episode, which is precisely what this genre requires. The dramatic moments are stacked one on top of the other, so that if you had to briefly summarize what happened, you would just basically give up (in this way, primetime soaps are similar to many French and Italian 19th-C operas, where event after event occurs, leading to the denouement. So the opposite of Wagner). And while previous episodes had moments bordering on such sublime improbability, this week succeeded to an unprecedented degree. Don't get me wrong. Past episodes foreshadowed that this show had what it takes to make it. My all-time favorite line was from last week, when Cookie casually dropped the fact that the Nation of Islam killed Lucious' father (Whaaaaaaaaaaaat? And no, there has been absolutely no follow-up. None. Nada. I cannot wait).

Other things that Empire has given us: Countless animal prints. A replica Elizabeth Taylor engagement ring. Board meetings with basketballs (yes, 'meetings' was plural there on purpose). What is possibly a rendering of Napoleon (someone on a horse?) on Hakeem's wall. Cookie preparing to go to war by taking out a gun, a wad of cash, and then pausing to don a fierce hat. Naomi Campbell as Hakeem's quite-a-lot older 'side piece.' A piano in virtually every room. Judd Nelson as exploitative villain. A club named Leviticus. Let me repeat that one, because it bears repeating: a club named Leviticus.

Where Empire differs from its forebearers, though, is in its ability to tie together various strands of cultural products, much in the same way that hip hop does. While there is no 'mixing' per se, the uncanny way that Empire draws on a variety of influences by presenting them both simultaneously and in juxtaposition is extraordinary. We see the glamor and violence of hip hop: artists perform on stage, then get in gunfights backstage. We see the underclass of Philly and the conspicuous consumption of New York's 1% (in this week's episode, Cookie's younger sister stated, 'Your kids aren't real, they're rich,' referring to the fact that she was far more concerned about saving her family from drug lords than Cookie could ever need to be. In the same episode, one of Cookie's kids walked around a hip hop video set downing champagne at will). Lucious' father was killed by the Nation, while his finacé was a debutant. Even the music is starting to feature a rift between the radio-ready, Drake-ish offerings of Hakeem ('Drip Drop') and the RnB arabesques of Jamal, inspired by the fact that he lives in the one neighborhood in Brooklyn wholly unaffected by gentrification. Oh, and did I forget to mention the Rihanna-esque character Tiana, this week revealed to be a lesbian? Within the first five minutes of this week's episode? So basically as a subplot?

[Ed. note: I need to point out that 'Kid Fo-Fo,' from previous episodes, is pretty much my favorite fake rapper name ever]

This show has been touted as a combination of Shakespeare's King Lear and the classic 1968 film The Lion in Winter (...and the family name is Lyon, get it?). At first, I thought that these comparisons were facile--all of these share the common theme of three kids, all fighting over an empire. But the more we learn about these characters, the more complicated these relationships become. The Lion in Winter also highlighted the flaws and contradictions in all of its characters--it's almost like a moviefied primetime soap in this respect:

I'm not sure how FOX managed to find a mid-season show that could evoke all of these varied and different responses in only five episodes, all in this modern setting of a hip hop label. There has been some talk that this version of hip hop feels slightly outdated, but I don't think that this is necessarily a criticism; certainly the show makes use of modern media and feels present to me. Like any empire, I'm sure that this one will eventually be toppled by something bigger and better, but until then, look upon this work, ye mighty, and do not despair. The primetime soap is back and it may be better than ever.