Some thought on Pratt Daddy

Critiquing the politics displayed in a Spencer Pratt interview is shooting fish in a barrel. Yet I find myself obsessed with this piece posted to XXL earlier today. I have many questions, foremost among them: Is Spencer Pratt in on his joke (a la Paris’ exaggerated stupidity on The Simple Life? Does he think this will make a profitable plot twist for his character, is he intentionally playing on the fact that people hating on his tool entitlement is core to his “appeal”? If so, does that make his rap career more or less hellacious, him more or less of a hateful fuckface? I’m really not sure.

Choice revelations in the interview re: S dot Pratt and Hip Hop:

-There is no correlation between his decision to become a rapper complete with public announcement of the same, and writing any material. He apparently has listened to some beats, but has no material of his own. Yet!

-There is no correlation between being a rapper and rapping. When asked to spit a verse, Pratt Daddy demurs and instead offers:

I mean my verses are real simple, I get money. I get paid all day, you know I’m on TV and I love life, you know, I got my fly wife and I kick back and get money. It’s not about rhyming lyrical this, it’s just about swag and that’s all I’ma be doing on tracks, just talking about really how paid I’m getting cause it’s ridiculousness.

-He knows less about hip hop than my dad.

-He’s a fucking racist prick, but more on that later.

Some relevant quotes:

A. I mean I not saying I’m the new white gangster rapper but I’m just saying I’m ruthless, I’m disobedient. I don’t have rules. Everyone hates me. I’m more hated than Eminem was in his prime so why wouldn’t I get on the Steve Morales smash, trash Puerto Rican, you know straight from the hood pop bottles, you know?

B. I’m actually signed to the hottest label in the whole—it’s the future of music. They’re the only ones with the right distribution model, they actually know how to make money.

XXL: What’s the name of the label?

SP: They actually know what profit is—it’s called Great White Records and I’m the CEO and right now sole artist under the label. I’m handling A&R, PR. I’m the stylist for the label.

On Eminem:
C. I’m not about to be trying to battle one of the founders of white hip-hop for me - but I’m not too amped on him.

D. I feel bad for the game. I’ve been the biggest hip-hop fan. I never thought I would have to go in and save the game, be the white hope in the game, but it’s happening. My calling is here.

Pratt is fixated on whiteness in a manner both racist and delusional. He feels his whiteness bears constant comment, as he probably has some anxiety about being a minority in The Game, but in no way does he question or interrogate its meaning. Instead he has constructed a grand narrative of white rappers and comes off as the self-appointed spokesman for the Aryan Hip Hop Nation. Eminem is a “founder of white hip-hop”? What exactly is “white hip hop”? He implies that being white rapper means being part of a (white) movement—for all the issues of cultural appropriation (more on that) and other problematics that happen when white people rap, it’s a step beyond Asher Roth style offensiveness to declare—and celebrate!—such a notion. I don’t think that white people should necessarily be barred from rap, but I don’t think the game needs a “great white hope” either, even before we get to the psychotic pipe dream that the words hip hop, hope, and Spencer Pratt belong in a sentence together.

It’s an interesting line from Em to Asher to Pratt. Eminem paid dues. Whatever valid criticisms one might make of his cultural role, inclusive of being a white dude who briefly was the biggest rapper on the planet, he did come up through hip hop scenes and was very much a part of the culture. He didn’t just take the musical style and leave everything else, a la Roth, the unapologetically un-hip hop white rapper catering to his white, fratty brethren. Pratt cites Roth extensively in the interview as his inspiration—not that he likes him per se, but:

“Once I heard him on Kiss FM when I was hearing him on Ryan Seacrest, I was like, “Oh my God, if this guy is on the radio I need to start rapping.” I’m about to be so platinum.”

And thus Roth begat Pratt, a douchebag so removed from the culture he’s appropriating that he doesn’t even feel a contradiction in being a rapper who doesn’t yet rap. “Rapper” seems to be a celebrity identity he’s selected, one that consists of attempted Ebonics and “swag”. He talks about loving hip hop but displays little but ignorance about it and is unable to discuss any artists in detail. Even his explanation of his own disappointment with Eminem’s Relapse as “the biggest Eminem fan” makes little sense:

“I think when you lose the grind and hustle that I have right now at like 25, just get my fame shining as bright as he was when writing his best stuff you just have a whole different energy. And then when you got $300 million or whatever in the bank and you just chilling and you just wanna go and make a statement and you just go put out a track or two with Dre it’s just a different sound.”

So…Eminem lost it because he got money and fame, while already having money and fame is exactly what Pratt plans to rap about as savior of The Game? Never mind that Em’s best albums (Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show) were post fame. Also: anyone whose read a single article about Eminem recently knows that he’s hardly been “chilling” these past few. And what does he mean about Em wanting to “make a statement’? Is he forgetting that “Mosh” was five years ago? Is his weed that good?

While the world is largely in agreement that Pratt is an overindulged and under-brain-celled jerkoff, his prickiness here speaks to an entitlement that’s beyond his own. It’s not just that he’s brick stupid, he’s another monied white dude that thinks the world is his oyster. He displays a feeling of absolute entitlement to be accepted as a rapper that Eminem (rightly) felt that it was fair that he had to earn through his relevant skills, and investment in community, and Yet Pratt seems Em as some kind of color line breaking pioneer, blazing a trail so that future white rappers might not have to suffer as he did, an offensive concept that has nothing to do with Eminem’s own race and hip hop politic. Yet I’d imagine Pratt’s attitude is much closer to that of the legions of young white fans of both artists (if it makes sense to call those who follow Pratt “fans”), and if he has any success as a rapper (admittedly doubtful), it will pave the way for any douchey white dude who can’t even rhyme to attempt rap stardom without anyone batting an eye. Just more cultural colonization in post racial America, nothing to see here, folks.

I’m interested to see how this plays out.