I’ve got
a handful of heroes, some of whom I’m ashamed to admit, that give me hope. I think the the thread that connects them is that they are all people who have executed on something perfectly and there’s hope there, that perfection is possible. Maybe it’s some residual juvenile longing for purity. A lot of rappers compare hip hop to chess and that could apply to most music, but rap music is generally much more explicit. The game is to stay relevant and in addition to chess, it has a lot in common with business. You have to position yourself correctly. I thought Jay-Z might have fallen off, but on his cameo on the new Wayne album, he re-positioned himself. In retrospect you might look back on his career and the narrative is more obvious (intentional or retrospectively created for future longevity?). Came in young, changed the game for a few albums, job done, released a retirement album, goes into CEO mode, stumbled with Kingdom Come, came back with American Gangster. Now what? The bad move would be to continue business as usual, join the pack competing to be the hottest MC, and slip into irrelevance. Instead, on the heels of a gazillion dollar deal to release three albums and tour, he takes his role as one of the best as a given and then repositions himself as passing the torch.
I’d suggest that maybe a point of confusion and a source for frustration is the difference between perfection in process and perfection in substance. Some works of art, music, etc could be called perfect, but it wasn’t easy getting there, I’m sure. The process wasn’t perfect, it was wrought with mistakes and trial and error before ultimate success. I know me, you, and people generally get frustrated when going about things is difficult in a way that suggests we aren’t good at the thing, so perhaps we shouldn’t do it. There’s no purity at all in working hard at something—it’s all about getting your hands dirty. In other words, the hope you feel for substantive perfection ought not defeat your interest on something where the path ahead is filled with procedural messiness. That example with Jay is exactly what I’m talking about.
