The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

by Jessica Hopper

  Sean Slade: I had one conversation with Kurt when we were mixing it. Courtney called and said, “Kurt wants to talk to you.” And I remember looking at Paul and Paul giving me a look like, “You’re gonna do this one.” I got on the phone and Kurt starts going, “I got these mixes, and here’s what you gotta do—you gotta make the snare sound huge, and you gotta double all of Courtney’s vocals.” And I said, “Sorry, Kurt, but we’re not gonna do that. That’s not the album we are making here, that’s not the approach we’re taking.” What Kurt was saying, basically, was make it sound like my album, make it sound like Nevermind. And I told him, straight up, no way, we’re not going to do that. I probably pissed him off, but I didn’t care.

  Paul Q. Kolderie: By the end, communication was at an incredible low point: 42 days straight, working everyday, the pressure cooker. We had the world’s biggest rock star coming in and saying he didn’t like this sound or he did. We wanted to just mix and get out of there. We felt like the writing was on the wall—we thought Kurt was going to take it and mix it with Scott Litt. It’s what they’d done with In Utero. I didn’t care who mixed it; I was just done.

  Patty Schemel: I enjoyed playing all of those songs, and I felt comfortable, and I felt at ease, and I felt excited about all of the songs. I think I remember Sean or Paul saying, “Oh, this will be a great punk record”—you know, not giving it its full due. It was weird because I was so proud of the record, but it was hard to get any perspective being so close to Nirvana. Everything they did was huge, so it was hard to get any idea of what our record would do. I was so proud of it. And that was all that mattered to me at that time.

  Courtney Love: I didn’t feel like I nailed that, but I nailed my own version of it. I feel fine about it. I have a pretty healthy self-esteem. Sometimes. I didn’t think it was as good as Siamese Dream, I didn’t think it was as good as Nevermind, but I thought it was fucking damn good.

  Paul Q. Kolderie: We were up so close to it, we couldn’t see what a great album it was. She wanted to make a record as good as Siamese Dream or Nevermind, and we were trying our hardest, but we didn’t know how to do that. There is no secret formula. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. In this case, it did.

  Eric Erlandson: One thing: Wikipedia is so wrong. I just read the whole Live Through This Wikipedia thing, and it’s so wrong.

  Patty Schemel: Oh, so full of shit, that Wikipedia. France? We didn’t go to France. That’s a load of shit.

  Courtney Love: I had a plan for the fourth record, and the fifth record, and the sixth record. I had a really grand design that got messed with because of my own problems. But I made it all the way to the third record, which absolutely, exactly was my vision. I’m not quite sure why Live Through This is so iconic. I think it’s because girls don’t make angry records as much. I’ve always thought [PJ Harvey’s] Rid of Me was a far superior record than Live Through This, but that’s good—it just keeps my ego in check.

  YOU KNOW WHAT?

  TINYLUCKYGENIUS, April 2010

  Older-generation female rocker ladies making uninformed judgment calls about women making music today, and how no one is angry anymore, how the ‘90s were so much better, when we had Liz Phair and Hole and Belly and L7 on MTV (a.k.a. the blinded nostalgia trope of the aging rock ‘n’ roll feminist) IS REALLY FUCKING UNPRODUCTIVE.

  It also shows they are not digging deep enough, or seeing the forest for the trees. If you think “angry women in punk” is a faction that has somehow receded, or that L7 in its day was some how better than the generation of women now in all manner of metal bands, you’ve gotten too far removed from the action. Go browse the 7” new arrivals like you did last in 199X and you’ll see a lot more women in the bin now than you ever did then. Spend 11.4 minutes online and catch up. It never disappeared, we just missed it because we were so busy clinging tight to copies of Guyville; we refused new ideas as relevant or good enough.

  Riot-grrrl wasn’t the end result, it was the catalyst. That’s what it was supposed to be, that’s what it was meant as—not a static thing. It didn’t have to stick around forever to count as successful—movements come in waves—it did its job perfectly. So much is different post-RG, so much permission and power and inspiration was funneled down steadily—whether it’s to the league of young girl shredders, or rock camps, or queer show collectives whose tether to RG was simply catching the tail end of Sleater-Kinney.

  Feminism has to move on, salute new icons, be excited by the varieties of archetypes of women in music that are self-directed, self-produced, not operating under the shadow of a Svengali hand. To not appreciate the difference in agency, or appreciate the different struggles of women now, turns it to a game of radical one-upsmanship. Our battles are not to be hung on the necks of the new waves of girls like an albatross.

  I remember in about 1995 or ‘96, reading an interview with Exene Cervenka from X that was really dismissive of “kids today” and the last time I saw her she was on the mini stage at a Girls Rock Camp benefit gushing about how great this was because it was time for a new feminism, and it was great that these young women (and little girls) have it totally different than we did. She can appreciate that because she is paying attention, she is part of it, in staying present in music and accepting new generations on their own terms. She is showing new girls that they are part of a continuum, not just passing on this epic mantle of the struggle. The impact of earlier punk feminism is so totally evident in so much music that is happening now, and it needn’t replicate what came before or paved the way for it. The sense of permission endowed in the work of women making music today is as radical—if not more so—than if they were parroting Bikini Kill lines. How current feminist work honors older feminist work is with its progress and new paths. That is all we should ask of it as feminists: BLAZE THE FUCK PAST US.

  The hope was then, in this supposed ‘90s golden era that is often harkened back to, that we would move beyond. Not park and roll around in it for another 18 years. The hope was that punk rock world would get better so that we wouldn’t always need Riot-grrrl to intercede and open everyone’s eyes. If we are now fondly recalling Alanis Fucking Morrissette as some sort of speaking-truth-to-power icon over supporting women who are making music today, then punk feminism is in much deeper shit than we ever were.

  PART FOUR: CALIFORNIA

  KENDRICK LAMAR: NOT YOUR AVERAGE, EVERYDAY RAP SAVIOR

  SPIN magazine, October 2012

  The story of Kendrick Lamar is not the story of a rapper from Compton. It might be the story of the most important rapper since Jay-Z. It might be the story of how hip-hop got real in 2012. But the only story Kendrick Lamar wants to tell is how he got out. Lamar’s major-label debut, Good Kid, m.A.A.d City, is a totemic memoir that marks the distance from where he came. It is, says Lamar, about how “everything in the dark comes to light.”

  On the cover of the album is a Polaroid dating from 1991. Lamar identifies himself as “baby Kendrick,” even though he was pushing 5 when it was taken. He sits nestled in the lap of an uncle who is throwing a gang sign with the same arm that’s wrapped around his nephew. On the table sits a 40-ounce and a baby bottle; baby Kendrick is wide-eyed, staring directly into the camera. “We got photo books full of pictures like that,” he says. “I was in that atmosphere every day until my teenage years.”

  He picked the photo “for the innocence in that kid’s eyes; not knowing that a baby bottle and a 40-ouncer…” He trails off. “It’s still so vivid to me. This picture shows how far I really come.”

  The 25-year-old MC is curled up in a corner of the couch at the back of his tour bus, wearing the pajamas he slept in, hoodie drawn and sleeves yanked over his hands. With the air conditioning on full-blast, the bus feels like a meat locker. Hundreds of fans queue up outside the venue, hours before doors open. It is Lamar’s first headlining tour and tonight’s show in Chicago is sold out.

  Lamar may be from Compton, but his roots are here. Tonight’s entire 200-person
guest list is made up of family, including Lamar’s grandpa, one of many relatives he helps support. “I ain’t even made my first big purchase yet,” he says. “I live in Los Angeles and I don’t even have a car. My ends go to take care of my family.” He used his Aftermath signing bonus to move his parents out of the Compton neighborhood where they raised him.

  Lamar’s parents met while they were kids working on Chicago’s South Side; his mom was one of 13 kids, his dad one of seven. In 1984, while still teenagers, they moved to Compton in order to start a family away from the gang warfare that was tearing up the city, where Kendrick’s dad was affiliated with the Gangster Disciples. “Compton was just as rough, but they didn’t know that,” explains Lamar. His parents had him three years later, and his three siblings came seven years after that. Lamar’s mother also moved much of her family out to Compton as well, effectively transferring their Chicago life to California proper. In Kendrick’s earliest memories, his parents are 25, the same age he is now. He shakes his head in disbelief.

  “I always play back these house parties in my memory,” he says. “Takin’ off my shirt and wilin’ out with my cousins, getting in trouble for riding our Big Wheels inside the house. They’d be playin’ oldies and gangsta rap. Just drinkin’ and smokin’ and laughter. A young crowd enjoying themselves. They were living the lifestyle.”

  Growing up, his mom worked in fast food, and his dad did, too, sometimes. “My pops did whatever he could to get money. He was in the streets. You know the story.” There were stints of being on welfare. “I remember always walking to the government building with Mom. We got our food stamps fast because we lived across the street,” laughs Lamar. “I didn’t know it was hard times because they always had my Christmas present under the tree and for my birthday.”

  It wasn’t until middle school when he realized that there was a different kind of normal for kids who weren’t growing up in Compton. There were kids from the Valley, north of Hollywood, who were bussed 30 miles to Compton to attend Kendrick’s school. “I went over to some of their houses…and it was a whole ’nother world. Family pictures of them in suits and church clothes up everywhere. Family-oriented. Eatin’ together at the table. We ate around the TV. Stuff like that; I didn’t know nothin’ about. Eatin’ without your elbows on the table? I’m lookin’ around like, ‘What is goin’ on?!’ I came home and asked my mama, ‘Why we don’t eat ’round the table?’ Then I just keep goin’, always askin’ questions. I think that’s when I started to see the lifestyle around us.” He pauses and continues. “You always think that everybody live like you do, because you locked in the neighborhood, you don’t see no way else.”

  Lamar says that Good Kid is for the kids in those neighborhoods. It’s a self-portrait in which others might see themselves. Both of his parents had gang culture in their families, and it was a fundamental part of Lamar’s childhood as well. “Being around it, it just seemed like what you gonna do, what you gonna be,” he says.

  As a teenager he started drinking and partying, emulating and embracing all the things he’d grown up around, until his father sat him down at age 16 and told him something that would alter the course of his young life. “My father said, ‘I don’t want you to be like me.’ I said, ‘What you mean you don’t want me to be like you?’ I couldn’t really grasp the concept.” An only child until he was 7, Lamar was, and is, incredibly close to both his parents. His dad took him to the swap meet every weekend for as long as he could remember (a detail that reappears in the song “Westside, Right on Time”), and to see Dr. Dre and Tupac shoot the “California Love” video around the corner from their house; which set off his dreams of being a rapper. “He said, ‘Things I have done, mistakes I’ve made, I never want you to make those mistakes. You can wind up out on the corner.’ He knew by the company I keep what I was gettin’ into. Out of respect, I really just gathered myself together.”

  Lamar began to see life around him with new clarity. “I saw the same things over and over. A lot of my homeboys goin’ to jail. Not, like, in and out. Sentences. And dyin’; it was a constant. It was a gift from God to be able to recognize that.”

  When you begin to type “Kendrick Lamar” into Google, one of the auto-fill suggestions of popular searches is “Kendrick Lamar gang affiliation,” perhaps owing to the assumption that an unaffiliated rapper from the birthplace of gangsta rap seems impossible. Or maybe it speaks to today’s skeptical hip-hop fans, who have grown savvy to the frequent disconnect between MCs’ images and their real backstory. On the contrary, though, Lamar has several songs refuting that he’s ever banged (most notably, “Average Joe,” off Overly Dedicated.)

  He says he’s not offended that people may not believe him. “Here’s the thing about gangbanging. I was born in that area. Where you have to be affiliated. The difference was I didn’t turn 17 and say, ‘I wanna be a gang member.’ Gangs is my family, I grew up with them, I hung with them. So, I been around it, been through it, but I can’t sit here and claim a gang. That’s my family more than anything.” He smirks, then grows animated, “People saying I am ‘gang-affiliated.’ Yeah, I almost wanna say that I am because I wanna change the idea. I don’t wanna separate myself. I don’t wanna be in the hills. I wanna be in the center. I want them to know they can still touch me.”

  “He’s always been humble like that,” says Ab-Soul, who has been tight with Lamar since they met eight years ago, and is a member, with Lamar, of the Black Hippy collective. “He hasn’t changed. He has a glow about him. He carries it with him; he’s just a deep guy.” Ab-Soul recalls being humbled by the first time he heard a mixtape recorded under the name “K.Dot.” “I was certain I was the best MC in my area,“ he says, laughing. “Or at least my age bracket. But to hear someone rapping at that level at our age, it was incredible.”

  Lamar began writing rhymes at 13, but it wasn’t until he saw 50 Cent’s early mixtape success that he realized he could be recording and releasing his rhymes on his own. His first mixtape made its way to Top Dawg Entertainment; the story of his audition has since come to signify his dedication. The 16-year-old MC stepped into the booth and freestyled for two straight hours, while label founder Anthony “Top” Tiffith pretended to ignore him, to see what Lamar had to prove. The label had signed Jay Rock two weeks prior and the two MCs began recording at the label’s studio house in nearby Carson. Lamar, then barely 17, was a constant presence after school. In 2009, as the Top Dawg roster had expanded to include Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q, the foursome formed Black Hippy, “the conglomeration so cool it could freeze L.A.” rhymes Lamar on the groups quintessential “Zip That Chop That.”

  Jay Rock, who is also in Black Hippy, was similarly stunned the first time he went into the studio with Lamar, shortly after they’d both been signed. “I was working on lyrics, writing, writing, writing on paper. And Kendrick goes in the booth with nothing. I asked him where’s his paper? He’d written it all—the whole song—in his head in about five minutes. That’s when I knew he was crazy. And a genius.” Jay Rock cribs the trademark line about Dick Clark to describe Kendrick’s maturity level at 17 years old: “He was like the world’s oldest teenager.”

  The first time Ab-Soul was in the studio with Lamar, he saw that he was working on a totally different level. “[Kendrick] was recording full songs with hooks and bridges and melodies and things to keep a crowd. He was not just interested in being the best rapper, he was making songs that the world could sing.”

  Here’s one of the many places where Lamar diverges from the archetype of the “conscious” rapper. He’s not enough of any one thing to be categorizable. Sure, he’s self-aware and shouts out Marcus Garvey, working in tropes of black liberation without being political. He’s got nuanced songs about women with real-life struggles and names, yet plenty of pop-that-pussy cliché. He’s emblematic of the purely-for-the-love-of-the-game underground but is also working on a collaboration with Lady Gaga. He broaches all the street shit with a raw emotionalism that signals he’s bee
n touched by it. (In a recent interview, he was quoted as saying that the scariest thing he’s ever witnessed was someone being shot in the head.) He reanimates narratives about life below the poverty line that we’ve become desensitized to. His appeal is broad but still nuanced.

  Lamar isn’t interested in touting himself as moral authority, instead using the story within Good Kid as an object lesson that there is another path. Unlike many of hip-hop’s previous survivor’s-tale albums, Good Kid recounts the good old-bad old days—a Reagan-baby born amid poverty, gang war and the crack epidemic—without a trace of nostalgia. He doesn’t brandish what he’s been through in order to establish how hard he is or to earn street credentials.

  And he doesn’t think other depictions of the streets are less valid. His family hails from Chicago’s 76th Street & Stoney Island, two miles from the O-Block projects where tendentious teen-rap flashpoint Chief Keef grew up. The two are now Interscope labelmates, and the subjects of two of the most sizable bidding wars in recent memory. Keef reportedly pulled down three million, Lamar confirms his deal at 1.7 million. Lamar, who has never met Keef in person, grows emphatic when discussion turns to the moralizing about Keef’s songs.

  “You can’t change where you from,” he says. “You can’t take a person out of their zone and expect them to be somebody else now that they in the record industry. It’s gonna take years. Years of traveling. Years of meeting people. Years of seeing the world.” It becomes unclear whether in talking about Keef, Lamar is actually talking about himself. He values Keef’s success on the same terms as his own. By doing music, they represent two dudes who are not on the streets. “Maybe he’ll inspire the next generation to want to do music. Convert that energy to a positive instead of a pistol.”