What these words are examples of is known in the academic poetic community as slant rhyme, which is a perfectly acceptable poetic technique, especially when one is working in a format, such as Hip Hop which hinges almost exclusively on the couplet.
Slant rhyme, however, is not what I want to talk about. I merely (like most of the posts that will follow, no doubt) want to examine the culture that has developed around this poetic convenience. I want to talk about clubs.
Now, let me specify. I do not want to talk about how they are pits of shallow congregation and competition, or how the club aesthetic is remarkably demeaning to women, nor how it and the attitudes that surround the club scene are remarkably chauvinistic and reduce women to the level of spectacle suited for rampant exploitation.
If I wanted to talk about that this would be a long post. And I'm tired.
What I want to talk about is subjectivity and participation(namely political participation)in the contemporary club scene.
Its important to note that in contemporary American culture there is a clear distinction that needs to be made between clubs and pubs. The word pub is an abbreviation of the "public house" which we yanks carry down from the English tradition of public eating and drinking establishments that were usually on the corner of every block providing the local residents with a place to go and (cheaply) eat, drink, and congregate.
Clubs, however, historically prided themselves on exclusivity and they become established in opposition to the "public" aspect of the public house. You have to earn the privilege of entering a club. Much in the way that dress code and appearance "earn" you entrance in to our contemporary clubs. (Unless you're a young lady, then your sex "earns" your way in to the club so they can get you drunk en masse and exploit your gender to get more young men to pay exorbitant covers in hopes of taking you home and further exploiting you.)
I said I wouldn't go there... I lied.
Regardless. When you enter a club there should be two things you notice:
1. The music is obscenely loud.
2. The lighting is obscene.
Conversations are quite hard to have when music is overwhelmingly loud, as it tends to be in clubs. The only subjective activity that actively occurs is that of dancing in suggestive manners. Which our bretheren in the 1990's counter-culture proved can be political, but its political only if you mean it to be. There needs to be intention.
Would all the single ladies dancing for sexual empowerment and a clear meaningful exertion of their abilities and desires as a liberated woman put your hand up?
K. Moving on.
Conversation is essential to meaningful interaction. Clubs do not allow conversation. Clubs do not allow meaningful interaction.
K. Moving on.
Pubs, however, though they may have horrendous Karaoke nights (which still carries some remnants of subjective interaction) they do tend to foster conversation better than their dance-club competitors.
Not to say the conversations will be particularly enlightened. Quite the opposite, they are generally rehashings of cable-news opinion, but still, they happen. The potential for exchange exists, and potential is all that is required. They permit the exchange of ideas to occur. Thats what's important.
Though this is not a researched statement I would not be suprised to find that the vast majority of the major public movements of the last 400 years originated in some way from the public houses, precisely because the potential exists where the clubs, much as they historically have been, are bastions of complacency and stagnancy.
