Ian Has To Prove It

The white rapper Ian has been under fire lately in the press. His manager defended him, but I think the criticisms are right: Ian has to show us more.

The white rapper Ian makes me reminisce about the other white rappers that came before him. Remember when New York rapper Action Bronson was given heat for his supposed style biting of Ghostface Killah? Bronson had gotten famous in hip-hop through his fresh and multi-cultured lyrics about food and frequent allusions to athletes in New York. He’s like if Stump the Schawb was reading the NY Post at his line cook job in Flushing. He’s not unlike the kind of person that you would meet after working a ten hour shift at a grocery store in Queens. And, his rapping was good, and still is: new album JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACHLAVA THE DOCTOR is packed with nods to Missy Elliott, The NBA on NBC, esoteric jazz samples, and “big bazooka off the bubble goose, hunting for the truth.” He’s still a technically strong emcee — startlingly vast with his language and rhyme schemes, but not quite the impressionist and Black firebreather that Ghost was. Still, despite all of his gifts from obscure references, flow, and ethnic charm, Bronson was criticized for copying Mr. Ghostface’s charm. 

It was both fair and also completely unfair. There’s certainly a whine in the voice of Ghostface Killah that Bronson unquestionably also has, as a Queens native — someone who grew up listening to hip-hop and interacting with men of color who inhabit the same city. Or, perhaps he even just has a similar accent because of the same refined understanding of culture. Yes, Ghostface also discussed the pleasure of life, whether that was food or women, with a certain intellectual curiosity. Granted, Ghostface also had references to sports, with evocative detail in the same way that Bronson has. If Bronson did steal from Ghostface, it was in the way that you can be influenced by a hero because that hero was made in the same image that you see for yourself. A part of Bronson probably hates the fact that people compare him to Ghostface, as all ambitious people hate comparisons to people they admire. But, Bronson’s muse always felt like something greater than just one kind of ethnicity — it was the composite of many cultures, many things, many women, and many foods that this Jewish and Muslim boy was consistently inspired by. People lost sight of that when they were chiding Bronson for saying that Ghostface wasn’t rapping like him anymore. Bronson is in the same line of rap that made Roc Marciano a hero, the same kind of music that changed the lives of myself and all of my friends. I maintain that it is basic to like Bronson more than Ghostface Killah, an example of white fans following people who look like them, and not the originators of the genre. However, it is equally as basic to only like Ghostface Killah and dismiss Bronson as an imitating fad. Both men are excellent rappers; one man is more excellent, and that’s fine. We’ve all won by having both of them celebrate hip-hop in New York for multiple decades. Sincerely, I wish they’d unite like the gentlemen and New York heroes they both are, do a song together, or do a cooking show together. Beefing is cool; but healing is more mature, and maturity can be just as cool as beef can be. 

After Tyler, the Creator’s comments about Ian (“this white kid. Regular Caucasian man," Tyler noted. "And he's like mocking Future and Gucci Mane... like rap music." ), I wondered about Ian’s manager, Bu Thiam, who claimed that Ian was in the long line of rappers who have been influenced by other rappers. “I signed Ian and I am from Atlanta”, said Thiam, attempting to check Tyler’s gangster. There’s certainly room for influence in hip-hop, even if it is white rappers taking that influence. While I am not a fan of white rappers — for example: Jack Harlow’s album that imitates Drake is thoroughly embarrassing — I would never say that white people can’t or shouldn’t make Black music. To say that would be to say that heroic geniuses such as The Rolling Stones or David Bowie can’t exist. I would just say that the Black music that a white man or a white woman makes should be rooted in fierce collaboration, the wish to mend communities together, making people love and believe one another’s stories, and allowing for the culture to stand alone — but together, nevertheless. More specifically, it should have a personal story to it, on top of an appetite for Blackness and all its swagger, language, and nerve. 

Ian does not currently have that. Granted, he did best Lil Yachty on their collaboration “Hate Me”, a simplistic braggadocio song with an excellent Childboy beat. Ian’s flow is syupy, (“I ain’t never bow to no man/I don’t care who the fuck you came with/I don’t care what the fuck your name is’), and the passion is there. It’s the best thing he has done yet, much better than the gentrified rap he tried on Valedictorian. On that album, the music doesn’t have any feeling. Although he certainly knows how to rap, he can’t, as Kendrick told Drake, intimate this violence. I don’t mean violence as in slugs or hawks, I mean the kind of race and class-based passion that sits right in the chip that all rappers must maintain to be successful. Valedictorian was an album of soullessness; rap for a frat party at Ole Miss.

Maybe he does care, but it has yet to be proven in any substantial way. A Twitter user said that Ian has been rapping like that since the beginning. Sure, but now he is in the public eye fans want to believe his story. The entire scheme, the idea that this private school white boy can rap just like Black people, isn’t as cute as Ian or Thiam imagined. I can see it working, too. If Ian can get big by not having any major ideas but getting by just impersonating and rapping, what else can someone do? Obviously, it makes sense that white kids love hip-hop. Hip-hop is innovation. What’s Ian’s story? The scariest thing about him is not that he is white and likes Future, it is that he is white without any semblance of consciousness. Allah knows that I wouldn’t care about Ian's white privilege song, but there are ways to ingratiate yourself to communities without being like a 2020 social justice commercial. It is not surprising that the white man likes hip-hop  — it is a booming business, and Future did not record music from his basement — but it’s deeper than just liking the genre. It’s contributing to its cosmic aggression, its depth, and details that derive the brain of the emcee; Action Bronson has done so. Ian, however, is still steps below where he needs to be to garner any respect.