The White Stripes' 'Icky Thump': Blues Rock in the post Hip-Hop Era "White Americans:
What, nothin' better to do?
Why don't you kick yourself out?
You're an immigrant too.

Who's usin' who?
What should we do?
Well you can't be a pimp
And a prostitute too."

The White Stripes - Icky Thump

I've got 99 Problems, and Meg ain't one. So my theory is this: 'Icky Thump' is Straight Outta Deetroit, late 60's blues rock (Cream, Sabbath, Led Zep) re-structured in a post-hip hop style. Not rap-metal, not funk-metal, not Run DMC vs Aerosmith, but something all together more natural, a great rock song by the world's best rock band built and delivered like a hip-hop track. The useful contemporary reference points for 'Icky Thump' are not Wolfmother or even Deetroit garage rock 45s, but 'Black Album' era Jay Z, Dizzee Rascal's 'Fix Up, Look Sharp' and the more rock orientated end of Eminem's work. It has been noted elsewhere that 'Icky Thump' owes something in terms of chord changes and groove to The Doors' 'Five To One'. The first time I heard 'Icky Thump' I thought it very reminiscient of Jay Z's 'Takeover - a song itself built by producer Kanye West around a huge thudding loop of...you guessed it: The Doors' 'Five To One' In it's overall construction & delivery, 'Icky Thump' is much closer to the Jay Z track than the Doors song it samples and thus the circle is complete; a contemporary blues-rock track constructed like a hip-hop track which itself is built around the sample of an old blues-rock track.

Production-wise "Icky Thump" is monsterously heavy and record, the drums are huge and funky a la John Bonham, the guitar solos are demented and frequent, and the whole thing just packs a mighty, mighty analogue THUMP the likes of which you don't really hear on the radio no more. The most unusual and memorable production twist, the sound which really defines the track, is the use of a B-3 Organ set to OBSCENELY LOUD FREAK OUT DISTORTO FUZZ; it is a sound unlike any other you will hear on day-time radio, a musical hook as arresting and exciting as Pharrel William's minimalist synth stabs, and one which certainly has one foot in the past (I guess there's a little ELP / Deep Purple in there) but has much more in common with something like DJ Shadow's 'Organ Donor'. Live, Jack plays over-amped, roaring, buzzing keyboard almost entirely to create ryhtym, texture, depth, and again, the sound is much closer to a DJ scratching (think the futuristic abstractions of prime Invisible Scratch Pickles) than a traditional rock keys player, especially as that jet-plane hammond noise is accompanied only by Meg's hammering drumbreaks.

Perhaps the aspect of 'Icky Thump' which is most strikingly hip-hop is Jack's delivery of the lyric, which is pure Beastie Boys. While there is a narrative of sorts (there's some sorta loose Mexican bandito vibe), largely the lyric consists of classic Jack White voodoo surrealism and the words appear to have been chosen primarily for their rhythmic qualities and dynamic punch, arranged in solid, 4 bar chunks. There are two successive verses which are of particular use to us here.

Firstly, the "White Americans" verse, which has already sparked critical debate owing to the fact that Jack's lyrics so rarely broach politics in such an explicit manner. Jack's views on US immigration law aside, this lyric strongly echoes the lyric of a song by fellow Detroit native; Eminem's 'White America." Like Jack, Eminem is a white artist trying to carve out an identity for himself in what is traditionally a black musical form; Eminem's hip-hop is Jack White's blues. Jack's delivery of this verse recalls nobody if not the angry-young man fury of Eminem at his most splenetic, and invokes the spirit of hip-hop (by directly adressing contemporay social issues) in a way almost no other White Stripes lyric does.

Also of interest is the verse which ends "You can't be a pimp and a prostitute too." In terms of my argument, this is a key line, the line which most eloquently expresses Jack's blues rock / hip-hop formula. On the one hand, pimp / prostitute imagery is classic blues stuff, the sorta dark sex 'n' sin imagery that blues guys have been working with from the Mississipi Delta to Chicago, and is perfectly in keeping with The White Stripe's vintage americana aesthetic. On the other hand, pimp / prostitute imagery is now almost exclusively associated with contemporary commercial hip-hop culture, the bling-bling, booty-shaking, big bucks world of Snoop Dog and 50 Cent, a world where the 'Superfly' styled 'Pimp' is a highly glamorised figure. Consequently Jack's use of 'Pimp' in a contemporary rock song must be understood at least partly as a conscious appropriation of modern hip-hop vernacular: it reads like a hip-hop lyric, and Jack's delivery is very much in a rap battle 'diss' style.

The great success of 'Icky Thump' is that its absorption of hip-hop techniques into 60's styled blues-rock is achieved 100% gimmick-free. No trendy 'scratching' pasted over heavy metal riffs or white-boy rapping grafted onto Funky Drummer beats here. This is NOT a 'cross-over' record. I don't suppose for a second that Jack went into the studio explicitly wanting to "do something like '99 Problems'/'Takeover'", but that isn't the point. The point is that he and Meg have effortlessly internalised the 'Takeover' sound and re-shaped it in their own image, creating something which approximates the power & structure of that sound, while managing to reclaim its heavy 'live band' rock roots. 'Icky Thump' is fundementally a superb psychedelic blues rock track, but it is one which could have only been produced in the post hip-hop era - and only a band as smart, tasteful and weird as the White Stripes could have pulled it off.

Labels: Hip Hop, White Stripes

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