I’ve lost track of how many I’ve seen, but I just saw another sign of the apocalypse: a Lil Wayne and Fall Out Boy collaboration.
What?
A collaboration between everyone’s favorite non-sequitur spitting, Hindu Kush blowing, University of Phoenix studying pint-size rapper and a four-piece pop-punk band that has inspired legions of guyliner and manscara clad fans? Impossible.
This sort of collaboration is only the tip of the iceberg. Artists from different genres have been collaborating with each other for decades. The earliest I can dig up is an appearance by José Feliciano with Johnny Cash on Cash’s television show. Rest assured that collaborations go back way further than that. I’m sure Socrates featured a hot Plato verse every now and then.
In theory, I’m completely in favor of collaborations. Without collaboration, no new genres would ever be synthesized, and the established genres would stagnate without cross-pollination. Kind of like European royal families.
In hip-hop, collaborations have been the rule, not the exception. Nowadays, nearly every hit single has a featured singer on the chorus or a featured rap verse to maximize appeal. I myself won’t stop listening to “Love In This Club” until Jeezy drops his verse (Ha-HA!). Even back in the day, established rap crews like the Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest featured their buddies on their own tracks. Although those early strictly rap tracks probably served more of the purpose of keeping kids like Busta from having to get jobs at Pathmark rather than maximizing their chances of getting on the radio.
Most collaborations that have hit the Hot 100 are from the allied fields of hip-hop and R&B. These two genres used to be at odds. On Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s debut album, at the end of one of the tracks, Dirt McGirt can be heard insulting an unknown person by implying that he was in some way “R&B.” Not too long after that, Joe Bananas himself was featured on the very R&B song “Fantasy,” by Mariah Carey. His Wu-Brethren Ghostface and Raekwon were featured on the remix of the horndog anthem and ’90s R&B standard “Freek’n You,” by Jodeci. When the hardest of New Yawk rappers had jumped on the R&B train, most lines between the genres had been erased, and today, the instrumentals for both genres are nearly indistinguishable.
However, this new breed of collaboration is a relatively new development: mainstream rap and mainstream pop rock.
This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if rappers didn’t have such unbelievably bland taste in rock and pop music. The first incidence of this syndrome comes on the much maligned Jay-Z comeback album “Kingdom Come” on the song “Beach Chair,” which features none other than dentist chair, “my ’80s, my ’90s and today” poster child Chris Martin.
Note: I was on the Coldplay train back in the day. Chris, if you make “Politik” again, I’ll be right with you.
I have to give Martin his due. He’s had a lot of success, and he makes mainstream music with more than a modicum of substance. But if you were a rapper featuring someone just for their voice, wouldn’t you pick someone with a little more vocal muscle?
These pop rock singers such as Martin, Adam Levine and John Mayer, who have all been featured on rap tracks, have fairly inoffensive and unremarkable voices outside of the context of their own music. So if you remove them from their comfy four and five pieces, and put their voices front and center, the effect is underwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong. I like “Homecoming.” I pretty much love “Heard ‘Em Say,” and “Superstar” is great too. But I can’t help but think how awesome it would be if rappers (and their labels) were willing to dig a little bit deeper in the rock genre for guest vocalists. Imagine the stoneriffic possibilities of Lil Wayne featuring Cedric Bixler-Zavala from Mars Volta. Or Kanye West featuring Thom Yorke (kind of already happened. Can’t wait for CRS). Or the ultimate hipster fantasy: Wayne and Tom Waits. They practically have the same pack-a-day voice anyway.
However, this crossover laziness is a two-way street. The Fall Out Boy and Weezy collaboration is on the Fall Out Boy album, so they effectively picked him. While I don’t object to that as much because Dwayne seems to be the most exciting person in music right now, why not give Wale or Brother Ali a chance on a track, Pete Wentz?
The point is that rap-rock crossover tracks are dictated by popularity. The Jigga man sees that Coldplay’s at the top of the charts: listens, likes it and calls Chris. Wentz is gingerly smearing his bangs against his forehead in the morning while listening to Ryan Seacrest, hears “A Milli,” likes it and calls Wayne.
I understand that my collaboration suggestions are for the most part not commercially viable and therefore unlikely, but if the taste-makers and heat-seekers in both hip-hop and pop or rock were willing to get their hands dirty and understand that their opposite genres go beyond the top 40, we could make some progress and give Akon and T-Pain a break.
If you hope that Lil Wayne doesn’t start using guyliner after collaborating with Fall Out Boy, then e-mail Ayres at jayres@media.ucla.edu.