Girl Talk, I Know You Are But What Am I?

To act as a DJ: to play, cut, mix, and blend recorded music.

Really, how better can you define what Girl Talk does?  What else do you call someone who doesn’t play any live instruments and makes their music from preexisting music?  This t-shirt is annoying on more levels than can be expressed on another t-shirt in block letters.  What is it about DJing that gives dudes such a sense of entitlement?  Approximately 95% of the time it’s a hobby, not carte blanche to act like a Cash Money Millionaire.

Greg Gillis apparently thinks he has surpassed the genre from which he was borne, as though there is some sacred ideology behind his laptop software.  It takes a pretty pompous, handjob-hungry dude to peddle something like this to his fans.  You’d think that with Stephen King likening him to Ulysses and Slate’s Jody Rosen comparing his style to Finnegan’s Wake he would feel critically justified enough to focus on something else, like using his groupies for practice at unhooking bras.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think Night Ripper is fun as hell, and it’s telling that this t-shirt didn’t exist then.  This t-shirt was created in the wake of Feed the Animals, the album that made his novel recipe for “fun as hell” as straightforwardly available as Toll House cookies.   Shit got lazy, which is problematic given that The Ironic Mega-Mash-Up only ever had a split-second shelf life to begin with.

Behold the Girl Talk formula: black people words, white people music.  To systematically dilute rap with Journey and Pat Benetar minimizes the risk of discomfort and the need for effort on the listener’s part, like putting bumpers on a bowling lane.  The technique serves to neutralize racial lines and provide faux-access to the culture of rap and hip-hop, one that might otherwise seem intimidating or unappealing.  Repurposing that music into a smattering of friendly catchphrases cheapens it for everyone; it’s an instance of the DJ privileging his own objective over that of his source musicians, and so rarely is his objective worth the while.

Anyway, Mr. “I’m Not A DJ” DJ, I’ll calm down when you calm down.