Harry Allen doesn’t like white rappers. Shocker?

The thought that 2009 might be the year when white people finally take over rap music must have seemed a lot more real and a lot more disturbing as recently as a week or so ago. I mean, if you're the kind of person who doesn't like the idea of white people in hip-hop.

That was back before Eminem put out the godawful "3 AM," making references to Silence of the Lambs, which came out when I was all of what, like nine? And I'm staring down 30, as if it had an especially nice rack. And before people realized that the Asher Roth album sucks balls, and that he didn't know any better than to call black women nappy headed hoes while performing at Rutgers University. As if black women are known for their ability to take a joke.

I wonder how differently Harry Allen's post about how white people are trying to rewrite rap history would have read if it was written, say, today, when it was announced that Asleep in the Bread Aisle sold even less copies than they were projecting the other day, when I realized that they were probably bullshitting about the album having undershipped. (And yet, I see XXL is still going with that explanation in their news item about last week's soundscans.)

I'm not gonna lie - I'm not that familiar with Harry Allen's work. I know he was the guy from Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype," and I know he's written some things for the Village Voice, the Source, and Vibe over the years, but I've only ever read his blog. I remember he once did a post about that white woman who made that shit up about being with the bloods. I may have written about it here at the time. I couldn't bring myself to be too upset with her, just because of how well endowed she was. A woman like that could talk me into buying Asleep in the Bread Aisle. And she wasn't even attractive. It just goes to show how sick I am.

But I digress.

In his post about the white rap history rewrite, Harry Allen suggests (and I'm paraphrasing, because it's late in the afternoon, and I've got shit to do) that a white person rapping is roughly tantamount to a white person telling a racist joke. Keep in mind, this was before Asher Roth was kicking it with nappy headed hoes. Could it be that Harry Allen was on to somehting? I don't know. That had never occurred to me before, but it could be that, due to problems with my upbringing, I'm not bothered as much by white people telling racist jokes, and hence I just didn't notice. Or should I even give a shit at this point?

It could be that Harry Allen has a problem with white people. I mean, beyond the fact that they held our ancestors in captivity for hundreds of years, and what have you. I hate to even go there, in a week in which I already had to put a prominent hip-hop journalist on blast for her Lauryn Hill-like views on race, but I know he had an article in that issue of the Source where Benzino was going at Eminem, and I'm not sure if that was because he needed the money or what. That was before the Internets were big.