Listening to lately:

Camron - Killa Cam
Field Mob - Georgia (Feat. Ludacris)
Gang Starr - Gotta Get Over (Large Professor Remix)
Memphis Bleek - Dear Summer (Feat Jay - Z)
Missy Elliott - Wake Up Feat Jay - Z
Nas & 9Th Wonder - Ether
Romanowski - Dance Dance Dance
Sonic Youth - Cotton Crown
k os - B Boy Stance

This keeps coming up in conversations lately: people I know seem to think (or assume) that our country, and the world in general is slowly but steadily becoming less racist, sexist and homophobic. That, despite whatever setbacks may occur, the slow trend is tolerance.

I think this comes from the slow improvement in protections afforded by law & striking down of discrimination encoded in law (ie. civil rights movement). But equal protection under the law is very different than what happens in people's hearts and minds. And how they will act under strain.

I haven't read freakonomics (I've read the original nyt article), but I keep thinking about how you would measure racism. So far, the best I've come up with is looking at census info and measuring integration on the following levels:
community (diversity)
extra-household (immediate neighbors)
intra-household (family, roommates)

The tendency to isolate (or insulate) oneself in homogeneous communities is an aspect of racism that's fundamental, even to latent or covert racism.

It's too much work to do the study - I don't even know the tools to use. Can the address & race data could be obtained from census.gov?

Hustle & Flow focuses on only two bits of DJay's music: the chant "whoop that trick (gettim)" and the hook "it's hard out here for a pimp." The latter is written by DJay, but the melody comes from the white guy, and it's sung by his prostitute. Again, the former is DJay's words (with help from the producer), but its turned into a chant by the producer and chanter by everyone. So, neither hook nor chant really has much to do with DJay.

The movie keeps coming back to these two snippets and cutting or fading away immediately after. It's a common point of view: the crucial part of a rap is the hook or chant. But it's strange to see that in a film nominally about a rapper. DJay's lyrics aren't that interesting: on their own terms and in the sense of how much attention they're given by the director.

It's true though: the wider audience for hiphop doesn't really pay any attention to the verses of a rap. The rapper is mostly there to hang a cult of personality on.