lebow-nihilists

“Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” – Walter, The Big Lebowski

A friend of a friend swayed side to side in a football tailgate haze a couple weeks back. Beer and cigarette smoke fumed from his pores. He took a sip of Miller Lite and pawed at his freshly grown porn-stache and scruff.

“I don’t trust a man who can’t grow one,” he said. “Matter fact, I don’t trust anyone who’s born after the Berlin wall fell. Until they know true evil, they’re just living a life of nihilism.”

Fast-forward to that Tuesday and I’m standing across from a young, sandy haired, Best Buy salesclerk — born after the Berlin wall came tumbling down, undoubtedly — growing the beginnings of his own porn-stache and scruff. I handed him a clean, sealed copy of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2, proud to be buying good Hip-Hop for once in what seemed like forever.

The clerk leaned in and said in an aside of confidence, “If it’s in Cuban, why is everybody buying this?”

Nihilist. Fuck me.

Never mind “Cuban” isn’t a language, the bigger issue with the man-boy’s sentiment was OB4CL2 has forsaken itself. It has lost the ear of an entire up-and-coming generation. It is too hard, too dark, to grizzled, too without a dance to be relevant. It is, quite frankly, the best album of 1999 to come out this year.

Little Baby Jesus in the manger, Raekwon is irrelevant. Wu-Tang…is old.

This has nothing to do with age — we were carving Wu Tang symbols into our binders in high school — this has everything to do with what’s hot now. And what’s hot is not Rae cooking over a bitty stove. It’s not Rae rapping about bubble gooses. It’s not a fight over which is better, OB4CL2 or BP3. It’s just not. It’s a dance, and lines cut into your high-top fade, and tightpants in your video for your one-and-done radio e-Hit, and shoot… it’s everything Wu Tang never was. There are exceptions, but the rule is kids think Wu Tang is old. Jay-Z is old. Nas is old. Queensbridge, Shaolin & Bed-Stuy are all old. And the music that spoke to the seedy underbelly of society and gave listeners more evil shit to think about than who said what about who on Twitter, is old to the next generation of cool kids. The next generation of new boyz.

I can handle growing old and relinquishing the scepter of The In Crowd to a new generation of taste-makers. But not until they get some taste (and no, there’s not a “Taste” app on your iPhone, kids. You can’t Shazam it.) It’s all been Hollywood happy for them so far, more glistening than a spit-shine slob-knob. They haven’t heard their heroes rap about true evils yet. And until they know true evil, they’re just living a life of nihilism.