Mooks. No, not the retro-fratboy fashion label, but a youth subculture
inspired by rap, metal, burlesque images of black culture, professional wrestling, porn and the 'white-trash'
identity. (via Follow Me Here)
what white artists have taken from hip-hop is a towering sense of resentment.
Rap today has a well of aggrievement, and when a black artist is sloppy about
his rage, race relations have a way of focusing the issues for him.
It doesn't take much thinking to imagine what a black rapper might be mad about.
But when white kids start talking that talk, the rage often comes out inchoate; it appears and vanishes like a half-formed thought. And it doesn't take much to release it...
And the easiest targets get flayed the worst: women, of course, and gays.
Half of the 98 percent-Caucasian crowd is dressed for a tractor pull, the
other half for a Puffy video. There are longhairs with John Deere caps and
denim jackets drinking beer alongside pals wearing Fubu shirts and Avirex
footwear. Rednecks dress like roughnecks, and people who in their daily lives
keep a distance from black culture have given themselves a ghetto makeover.
I ask one fan who loves Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit and even the Marxist,
multiracial Rage Against the Machine if he has many black friends. He smirks
and removes his baseball cap... He is a skinhead, and he knows he has answered my question without saying a word.
Rap ...
makes life on the streets seem as thrilling as a Playstation game. Pimping and
gangbanging equal rebellion, especially for white kids who aren't going to get
pulled over for driving while black, let alone die in a hail of bullets