"This Prodigy album is great. Who's this Mobb Deep I keep hearing about?"

In his last column, my esteemed colleague Big Lev discussed the meaninglessness of the term “emo rap.” I happen to disagree with his assessment; perhaps it’s an unnecessary classification, but track-by-track, I feel that there are definitely songs that lyrically emphasize emotion far more than most rap, much of which is blatantly anti-emotional. But I want to discuss another similar point on which he commented only briefly: the goofy fucking description of certain acts as “hipster rap.”

First off, let me say that I don’t even get what a hipster is supposed to be. If it is just someone who stays on the cutting edge of music, than I’m a hipster—but I know I’m not, so that can’t be it. Does the hipster philosophy extend beyond the sphere of music? Is a hipster someone who has reveled for so long in the supposed irony of drinking PBR that they now actually enjoy PBR? To be a hipster, do you have to dress like someone whom no one could ever take seriously? Do you have to jerk off to Pitchfork Media? Do you have to have a shitty, faux-sophisticated, unearned elitist attitude about all of these traits?

As you can probably tell, I don’t have a very high opinion of hipsters, or at the idea of hipsterism as a meek liberal arts university subculture. To me, they seem like a lame, overcompensating group that is pissed off that this generation doesn’t consider them cool, and they desperately wish that they were born in the beatnik age (that’s right, it’s an age now—Stone Age, Bronze Age, Beatnik Age). I suspect that this is part of the reason that they reject most mainstream rap. In a subversively racist way, they resent the fact that rappers and other black representatives of hip-hop culture truly set the standard for hipness, not them.

But the problem with hipster rap isn’t the fact that hipsters like it; hey, at least they’re getting something right, even if they bring a lame white-boy aesthetic to an image that used to be dangerous and cool. The problem is that hipsters don’t like any other rap besides whatever album ranked highest on their preferred indie rock website’s most recent year-end list.

I mean shit, Mr. So-Called Hipster, I love Clipse too, but really? “Hell Hath No Fury” is your favorite rap album? Oh, you like “3 Feet High and Rising” too? Wow man. You’re deep. What else is in your top ten? Oh, you only own six rap albums? Well, that would explain a lot.

A hipster who likes TV On The Radio could probably tell you three decades of alt-rock history, but the same hipster riding around on his Vespa (okay, now I’m really reaching for stereotypes) bumping “Fishscale” couldn’t tell you a goddamn thing about rap. Hipsters need to learn the basics, the roots; study the variety of production styles and geographic idiosyncrasies; realize that some of the fundamental qualities of the rap they like can make a lot of mainstream rap truly transcendent. Because if there’s one positive thing I can say about hipsters, it’s that they know music, and they listen with a better tuned, more critical ear than any other group of popular music fans. That’s what makes their willful ignorance of hip-hop—as well as the label “hipster rap"—so absurd.

(An aside: is it possible to “bump” anything on a Vespa? Do scooters have sound systems?)

That said, there is one group that I think could legitimately be called hipster rap: The Cool Kids, whom I actually think are pretty good. They deliver all their braggadocio in irony, they sound simultaneously super-dated and cutting edge, they dress like idiots, and Pitchfork has told the hipster community it’s okay to like them. Just make sure you put a Radiohead or Pavement song between each track on your playlist.