ReMix and Plagiarism are two different things. A remix is the act of recombining audio tracks from a recording to produce a new or modified track/song. Plagiarism is the act of taking someone elses work or idea and using it as your own. The difference between the two is the remix does give credit in some form or another to the works of others and using something to make something totally new. Plagiarism does not in any way, it’s stealing something, therefore, credit is not given.
Chapter 8: Rice discusses what is stereotypical in America according to cool. Cool is usually considered to be; male, white, someone who can stand their own ground, attractive, and heroic in a way. Rice talks about Norman Mailer’s attempt to calm those traumatized by the war came up with the “white negro” as an alternate lifestyle in an effort to be cool raising the question, “are black people cooler than white people?” Rice then describes the stereotypical black male as being the “angry black male”, rebellious and disagree with mainstream culture. This angry black male stereotype can be found in music and sports as Rice points out through the lyrics of Tupac representing cool as anger and with Muhammad Ali representing African-Americans who struggle to define themselves in spite of discrimination. Rice ends the chapter leaving the readers with two versions of cool: passive and active cultural participant.
Name changes in hip-hop have been very popular and done having an attitude based theme to the name change. Shawntae Harris changed her name to Da Brat, the first popular female rapper. Her name has no cultural significance nor any special meaning other than coming across as somewhat tough, and having an attitude. Rapper Curtis Jackson changed his name to 50 Cent taking it from a local robber. Marshall Bruce Mathers III used his first and last initial to come up with Eminem to use as his rapper name. Many rappers come from a very rough childhood and use their rap names to symbolize toughness and being a survivor.
Chapter 9: Rice talks about the ‘cool pose’. Through ethnography one can understand a group’s daily practices. The cool pose as Rice discusses is wearing a mask, creating a tough exterior to hide inner emotions. Showing control, toughness and in some cases demonstrating aggression and physical power.
These two pictures of the bands, Linkin’ Park and Metallica show the typical ‘cool pose’, portraying toughness, physical power and well, coolness.
