postdubstep:

Rolling stoned into the tennis club in Toronto I reach into my pocket and feel for the two Ludes, as well as the cool metallic switchblade my brother gave me for Christmas. I’m on my way in to collect research. After all, I’m a professional journalist - not the only one who’s risking their ass for art this time of year. Rapper Rick Ross is doing it too, smoking dope to the excess so he can finish his forthcoming album, God Forgives, I Don’t. Like a lot of rappers, Ross has spent the past half decade branding a particular image for himself, that of a cold-hearted (yet loyal) drug kingpin who thrives in the lavish playground of Miami Beach, Florida. And you best not forget, Ross also hails from the ghetto. So if you happen to claim otherwise he’ll have his goons administer a beat down and leave you in the hospital with serious nerve damage. Ross had that done to popular video blogger DJ Vlad back in 2008, all for the sake of his artistic image. I call that kind of insane devotion to your art martyrdom. Just like when Kanye West jumped the stage at the VH1’s, philandered in public with Amber Rose, and hopped on a float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, all so he could embody the image of a sex-crazed baboon portrayed on the cover of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Again, West, like Ross, jeopardized his own self for his art. He literally became a monster- ahem, a martyr.
Another artist who can be classified alongside Ross and West is newcomer Lana Del Rey, the 26 year old New Yorker behind the Billboard #1 Born to Die, a sugary accumulation of preteen sex fantasies and urban drug romps. The blogs have been going bonkers over this chick ever since she dropped “Video Games” back in August. The Fader - in typical premature-ejaculation-fashion - had her face plastered up on their home page for an entire month, from masthead to ads all the way down to daily blog posts. The whole blogosphere seemed to be up in arms over this Lizzy Grant chick, daughter of domain tycoon Rob Grant, who all of a sudden put on some eyeliner, grafted brass knuckles, and began singing about “wining and dining, drinking and driving, excessive buying, overdosin, dyin.” Lizzy called herself Lana Del Rey, and propelled herself into overnight stardom by abiding by clever branding techniques… popularized by none other than who? Well, Rick Ross and Kanye West, among others. Which makes Lana, tit for tat, more or less a martyr… right? After all, she bought some gangster jewelry, had her hair did by black chicks in Brooklyn, and may or may not have surgically injected collagen into her lips, all for the sake of art. Oh, and then there’s that new knowledge that she drank and smoked too much weed during elementary school, so her father sent her away to boarding school in Connecticut. All these experiences ultimately accumulated in Lana’s music, and are evident in the lyrics, “On our drugs and our love, and our dreams and our rage,” as well as, “Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain, you like your girls insane, choose your last words.” Evidently, Lana writes songs much like a rich hipster chick who has a killer Facebook profile pic and shops at Urban Outfitters would, if given the opportunity. Which makes her case, compared to those previously mentioned, a rather curious one.
Unlike some of the more tragic artists of our era - Lana’s idols, Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Monroe - Lana Del Rey aka Lizzy Grant has not taken, as far as I know, any enormous risks for her art, ones that could potentially threaten her livelihood. I mean, where I come from half the metropolitan population has probably smoked dope and/or drank too much at least once in the past six months, and that doesn’t make them any more artistic. In contrast, Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Monroe both suffered from severe drug dependencies, which, for good or ill, impacted their art and contributed to their mass appeal. That’s what made them tragic artists. So, just because Lizzie Grant can create a moniker for herself in Lana Del Rey, and come to embody every teenage girl’s glam/hipster fantasy, doesn’t necessarily make her a martyr. Then again, it doesn’t necessarily make her any less of a musician either. Not every competent musician has to be a martyr by rule. Take for instance an incredible talent like Andy Warhol. He wasn’t shooting dope up his veins a la William Burroughs during the 60’s (or maybe he was). He merely adopted the ‘Andy Suit’, which became his trademark brand: factory boots, black trousers, a striped tee, the hallmark wig, and a pair of shades to block out the sun; Andy had very sensitive eyes. Thus, the only real discrepancy I see between the branding techniques of Andy Warhol and Lizzy Grant, is that Andy’s art actually had some sort of technical credibility to it. He had long been acknowledged as a fine illustrator and painter, not to mention a thinker. It was Andy who acknowledged very early on in his career that art had to be about something for it to be considered… well, art.
Lana on the other hand admits to not always having a clear idea of what she wants to create. In a 2011 interview for FaceCulture Lana remarked, “Again, it doesn’t really make sense [her image of Paz de la Huerta in the “Blue Jeans” video]. I just like it. It’s a subconscious choice. Sometimes I do things more deliberately, but often I’m just guided by my intuition.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. But still, it was not too long after that interview that the negative reviews of her debut album, Born To Die, began to roll in. The biggest criticism, that she didn’t have the creative chops or emotional depth to put together a record. In a piece for The Independent, journalist Andy Gill writes, “…what appeared intriguing and curiously attractive in the isolated case of the ‘Video Games’ single becomes, sustained over a longer duration, not just irritating but almost morally objectionable. Don’t get me wrong: Born to Die is a skillfully wrought, carefully calculated piece of work, throughout which the singer never once steps out of character. But it’s the sad, grimly depressing nature of that character which some will find offensive, as the affectless, alienated persona of ‘Video Games’ expands into something more like a charmless, self-abasing sex-doll slithering for empty materialism.” Ouch. Pitchfork’s Lindsay Zoladz went even further and dubbed Born To Die “the album equivalent of a faked orgasm—a collection of torch songs with no fire.” Damn, we’re talking about the same girl here who was once described by her former choir teacher as “[shining] like the top of the Chrysler Building”. But then again, that makes no fucking difference to us, and bleeds rather succinctly into my thesis - that Lana, to my knowledge, has yet to risk anything substantial for her art. She is still only a cardboard cutout, a pastiche, an accumulation of all things a 16 year old girl might consider cool and buzz-worthy… which I’m cautious to say are sex, boys, drink, drugs, and fame. And according to the reviews, Lana doesn’t even communicate those things well.
Nevertheless, the popular press hasn’t always been so altogether bombastic towards her. Right after Born To Die dropped in January The Independent, the same publication that ended up bashing Lana’s album in months to come, applauded Lana’s debut project and awarded it a 5/5 rating. Simon Price from The Independent writes, “Elizabeth Grant is essentially an actress, and Del Rey is a character she’s created. Which is exactly where complaints about her inauthenticity founder: inauthenticity is the point… Never is this more effective than on the world-stopping “Video Games”. It’s a trick as old – and as enduring – as Hollywood itself.” Again, Mr. Price goes on about this actress nonsense, when in reality, no celebrity can ‘essentially’ disengage their private self from their public self. They’re intertwined - see Hunter S. Thompson. For good or ill, life is not like the movie Tootsie, however much we might like it to be. But that’s not the point either. The point is- or rather the question: why did the same publication, The Independent, write a positive review of Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die in January and then one month later anal rape it and award it a 2/5 rating? Well, like most of the papers/blogs, The Independent must have come to the realization that Born To Die, regardless of Lana’s half-baked intentions - she shows some awareness in the record “Nation Anthem” when she goes, “Money is the anthem of success so put on mascara and your party dress.” - reflects accurately the biggest flaw in contemporary music journalism, lack of care. Think about it. “Video Games” was released in late summer, and then five months later Born To Die came out, which probably leaves two or three months for the recording process. That’s rather rushed in my opinion, considering Dr. Dre has spent the past ten years working on his forthcoming third album, Detox. Even Lana’s manager, a Mr. Mawson, admits to Lana’s career moving a tad too quickly for her own good… that is, once she flopped on SNL. “To be honest, maybe we should have waited,” says Mawson of Del Rey’s SNL booking. “But you get offered ‘Saturday Night Life,’ you don’t say no.” Maybe so, but obviously Mawson couldn’t see that the accelerated nature of Lana’s fame had already manifested itself through her music, as her album began to sound like a mishmash of original records thrown together over pre-made beats, dropped on the public ASAP to cash in on her rising star. And that’s exactly what the papers/blogs were weary of. They became absolutely terrified that they might be shamelessly promoting a record that is little more than an ill-conceived accumulation of catch-phrases, jazz, and empty emotions, with little in substance to back it up. For the press, Born To Die was like looking into a mirror, and having to confront what they had become: a revered tabloid.
So, with all that background info in mind, I rolled up to the tennis club in Toronto to conduct my own market research for Lana Del Rey and her music. What? You thought I would illegally conceal a dangerous weapon and expose myself in public like that solely for recreation? No way. I was going in to ask some teenagers in white mini-skirts what they thought of Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die. After all, chicks between the ages of 12 and 25 are indeed the intended target audience for Lana’s art, give or take a few years. The first girl I questioned was Hannah Nasiry, a 13 year old middle school student who spends her free time on BBM and enjoys recreating shots of American Apparel models for her Facebook profile pic. What Hannah had to say was, “Her voice, it’s like perfect in a unique way… piercing, sharp, it’s unforgettable, and the songs are just different. It’s mellow. You could totally get high with her music too. It’s provocative, very provocative. Some of her songs remind me of Amy Winehouse.” After Hannah I approached another girl, this time a 17 year old, Mya, who has a Facebook pic of herself in a New Year’s Eve cap blowing a kiss, digitally-enhanced in black and white and taken on Photobooth. Mya was a little less enthusiastic about Lana, though still somewhat receptive, “You know what sucks, I wanna listen to some good music but I’m listening to Lana Del Rey. I didn’t even listen to the lyrics. It just sounded kind of bizarre and they all sounded the same to me. But for some reason I’m still listening to it. It’s infectious.” Right. Which means… regardless of the revelations Lana’s art might invoke for grad-school-educated music bloggers, it appears that Born To Die has seamlessly infiltrated the underdeveloped cerebellums of teenage girls, who take lyrics like “put your red dress on, put your lipstick on, sing your song, song, now, the camera’s on, and you’re alive again” as further ammunition to propel their ongoing classroom dramas. To these girls, Lana Del Rey is neither satire no pastiche, she’s a role model, further evidence that they are correct in their hormone-addled assertions about the world. Which is kind of scary in a way. Because I don’t think Lana Del Rey aka Lizzy Grant really gives a rat’s ass about what kind of reaction her music precipitates. And if she does, we’ll never know it. Just look at her past interviews. She gives away nothing! All she has done is shamelessly redefine the American Dream as a hollow collage of glittery noise, and now she’s going to bath in it. Whether you blame that on society, the music biz, or perhaps even me, doesn’t change the fact that Lana’s music is on many fronts a slap in the face to traditional culture, to the blogs, to teenage girls, to everyone really. And according to music critics, she’s not even talented, nor has she ever been - check her old records! All she is is a girl interested in art, who thought it would be cool to dress up like one of her idols, and play martyr. I’m sure Lizzie understands that you cannot hide behind your art. You have to live and die by it! Yet, because of her rich father or whatever, she has chosen to do neither. She merely strolls through the park with it.

By Peter Marrack