Heat Me
"On Hotness"
Because I have a car and I do not have an iPod, I have heard the song "This Is Why I'm Hot" by rapper Mims roughly a hundred thousand times over the past few months. At first, I was convinced that it sucked. Then, after a few trillion listens, it grew on me. Eventually, I came to see it as an inscrutable philosophical koan, one that demands analysis and begs many questions but offers few answer.
The crux of any analysis must begin with the song's chorus, wherein Mims raps:
"I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't 'cause you not/This is why, this is why, this is why I'm hot."
Let us consider, for the moment, that "hot" and "fly"" (and therefore hotness and flyness) are basically synonymous. Therefore, Mims is effectively presenting the tautology "I am hot because I am hot."
This claim demands Socratic analysis. What is hotness? If we do not know what hotness is, then how can we define ourselves as hot (or not hot)? Is hotness like obscenity; do we know it when we see it?
Moreover, who is the "you" that Mims addresses in his lyrics? Is it a specific target who lacks a particular hotness (flyness)? Or is it the audience of his song, the general public? If this is the case, it is a slap in the face to the public, whose support of Mims's single is one of the formative influences on his flyness (hotness). Unless of course, we believe Mims's freshness (dopeness) to be intrinsic to his style and his art, regardless of social context. In this case, Mims is quite the avant garde b-boy. While his contemporaries fret over "keeping it real," Mims defines art and fashion (two components of dopeness (freshness)) in terms of his own parameters of reality.
Now to address the beat. Overlaid with the constant minimalist synthesizer warbles, we as audience hear a number of strains of familiar hip hop songs. Notable appearances include the introductions to "Nuttin' but a G Thang" (Dr. Dre) and "Jesus Walks" (Kanye West). These two songs were at one time hot. Are they still? Mims does not take a stand on this issue. Maybe he means to say that these songs are still hot and his own hotness is comparable to (or at least reminiscent of) the hotness of classics of the hip hop canon. Perhaps he suggests that these songs are no longer hot. This would seem to imply that hotness is not an immutable characteristic as I claimed earlier, but rather a product of culture and time. Moreover, is the hotness of Mims's own single because of, in spite of, or regardless of, the comparative hotness (or notness) of these other songs.
Mims presents no clear answers to these dilemmas. Some may contend that it is the artist's responsibility to raise questions and not to answer them. By those guidelines, Mims has indeed created a piece of artwork. It's fascinating because it's cryptic, whether you like it or not.
And that is why, that is why, that is why it's hot.
Because I have a car and I do not have an iPod, I have heard the song "This Is Why I'm Hot" by rapper Mims roughly a hundred thousand times over the past few months. At first, I was convinced that it sucked. Then, after a few trillion listens, it grew on me. Eventually, I came to see it as an inscrutable philosophical koan, one that demands analysis and begs many questions but offers few answer.
The crux of any analysis must begin with the song's chorus, wherein Mims raps:
"I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't 'cause you not/This is why, this is why, this is why I'm hot."
Let us consider, for the moment, that "hot" and "fly"" (and therefore hotness and flyness) are basically synonymous. Therefore, Mims is effectively presenting the tautology "I am hot because I am hot."
This claim demands Socratic analysis. What is hotness? If we do not know what hotness is, then how can we define ourselves as hot (or not hot)? Is hotness like obscenity; do we know it when we see it?
Moreover, who is the "you" that Mims addresses in his lyrics? Is it a specific target who lacks a particular hotness (flyness)? Or is it the audience of his song, the general public? If this is the case, it is a slap in the face to the public, whose support of Mims's single is one of the formative influences on his flyness (hotness). Unless of course, we believe Mims's freshness (dopeness) to be intrinsic to his style and his art, regardless of social context. In this case, Mims is quite the avant garde b-boy. While his contemporaries fret over "keeping it real," Mims defines art and fashion (two components of dopeness (freshness)) in terms of his own parameters of reality.
Now to address the beat. Overlaid with the constant minimalist synthesizer warbles, we as audience hear a number of strains of familiar hip hop songs. Notable appearances include the introductions to "Nuttin' but a G Thang" (Dr. Dre) and "Jesus Walks" (Kanye West). These two songs were at one time hot. Are they still? Mims does not take a stand on this issue. Maybe he means to say that these songs are still hot and his own hotness is comparable to (or at least reminiscent of) the hotness of classics of the hip hop canon. Perhaps he suggests that these songs are no longer hot. This would seem to imply that hotness is not an immutable characteristic as I claimed earlier, but rather a product of culture and time. Moreover, is the hotness of Mims's own single because of, in spite of, or regardless of, the comparative hotness (or notness) of these other songs.
Mims presents no clear answers to these dilemmas. Some may contend that it is the artist's responsibility to raise questions and not to answer them. By those guidelines, Mims has indeed created a piece of artwork. It's fascinating because it's cryptic, whether you like it or not.
And that is why, that is why, that is why it's hot.