We live in a time of postmodernity, undeniably.
Now we could argue about what that means exactly, but the fact is the era we're in now seems wholly different, in every way, from the "modern" era we've just come out of.
Defining our postmodernity is a dense and unstable subject, but it can be understood rather clearly by looking closely at the current president of the United States and the hottest rapper in the game, and seeing what they have in common.
I first came upon the post-modern train of thought through art history. Among other things, the invention of photography in the 19th century caused many artists to question their purpose. If replication was the purpose of painting for example, than the evolution of the painter ends with the photographer. This got people asking the question, "Well then what is the purpose of painting? what is painting?" what is art?"
Painters began experimenting with this question through their work, abstracting the subject matter further than ever before. This was the time of Van Gogh and Monet, the work of the impressionists. Subject matter was still relatively traditional, with landscapes and still lifes, but the way they were represented seemed to communicate more feeling and emotion than the realism of photography could.
This new vein of abstracting subject matter was mined by many painters from that point on. Artists like Matisse and Picasso would distort subjects with both childlike playfulness and nightmarish confidence, while others like Kandinsky got rid of traditional subjects altogether, simply painting forms and lines and abstractions and rhythms; his art resembling music more than imagery.
Work in the avant garde continued to push the limits of what painting was if it were to aspire to be more than just a representation and an illusion. Critics like Clement Greenberg framed this exploration as a means of getting at the purity of painting, the essence of what a painting is, a work fully submitting to the "limits of its medium". I'm paraphrasing of course, but thats pretty much the gist of it.
If Clement Greenberg is an unfamiliar name for you, he's pretty much the reason Jackson Pollock paintings are so greatly revered.
Pollock's paintings are part of a movement known as abstract expressionism, and can be further subcategorized as action paintings. The subject matter of a pollock painting, to Greenberg, is paint. It doesn't pretend to be a landscape or person, it presents itself how it is, free of illusion.
Because Greenberg would say all paintings are simply just paint on canvas, but have disguised themselves as other things; shrubbery, fleshy bodies, roman gods, all just imagery hiding the painting's real truth. Greenberg liked work that got rid of all these illusions and presented its true naked self. Stripping a work of all the outside noise we have soaked it in and revealing its pure underbelly; essentially a quest for some natural truth. This is what Greenberg was after, and this is essentially a good summation of the motivations of modern thought.
The turn to postmodernity came about when people realized this quest was an impossible feat.
Working towards a "purity" in art reaches a moment of inconsistency. Creating this objectively pure work detached of its surroundings, existing as a self contained, self referencial form is the goal, but in reality you cannot detach these objects from their surroundings. Greenberg and his peers were just playing make believe.
The context in which the work is made is an inseparable part of the work. It helps shape the finished product just as much as the artist's intent. This objective purity Greenberg first saw in Pollock's painting comes from Greenberg's own subjective point of view. From another point of view the painting can mean something completely different. Pollock himself, for example, never spoke a word of this purity Greenberg was obsessed with. And yet both men's points of view can be equally true for each individual, throwing a bit of mud into Greenberg's puddle.
If the motivation of modern thought was a quest for truth by getting rid of any illusions society has projected upon the natural, the postmodern train of thought would be the realization that the truth is just as much a projection as everything else. It is as subjective as a painting.
This idea played out in the art world with Andy Warhol and others and continues to evolve to this day.
The same realization, that there is no one dominant overarching narrative of truth in the world, but instead an infinite number of eligible narratives to navigate through, emerged in many fields at the same time. Because of their infinite number, the content of these narratives becomes almost irrelevant. What becomes important is the structure of the narrative; the meta-narrative. This is a crux of postmodernism, and both Donald Trump and Tekashi69 have observed the meta-narrative of their respective fields and used it's structure to their benefit.
Before Trump, politics didn't appear to be such a depraved sespit as it is today. Of course it always was, the difference is that Trump has used himself as a vessel to bring the absurdities of the political system to the forefront. Much like early painting, politicians had gotten so good at their craft that the medium they did business in was completely concealed. All we saw was the final product: a squeaky clean senator. Or at the very least that the final product was intended to look squeaky clean. Trump had no intention of this. He embraced his slimeball politician persona. In a way, he was doing exactly what Greenberg hailed by submitting to the limitations of his medium. The product wasn't some pursuit of purity though, it was to show the absurdities of ourselves by revealing the hidden structures that make up the world we live in.
Obama was a master of the political demeanour; the pedigree needed to make a convincing illusion. Its easy to get caught up in his speeches. Trump is so unabashedly crass in all his appearances that any chance of getting caught up in the political illusion is annihilated. He does however seem to accentuate the illusions around him, which is partly the reason politics is such a circus these days: it has always bee a circus, Trump has just turned the house lights way up.
6IX9INE operates in much the same way, playing on the structures of hip-hop instead of politics. The rapper persona has always been this tough thug; gangsters you don't wanna cross. Now of course there's exceptions that break the mold, but the basic archetype of the rapper is one of aggression, independence, and disregard. 6IX9INE took these traits and cranked them up to eleven. Rappers are getting more tattoos? 6IX9INE put over two hundred 69's all over his face and body, even naming himself after the crudely loaded number. Rappers are getting more aggressive? 6IX9INE yells his lyrics with an intensity and raspiness that is unmatched in the game today, sounding like Tom Waits on cocaine. Rappers are talking gang shit again? 6IX9INE makes gang shit the subject of every one of his tracks, throwing guns and flags around whenever there's a camera in his face.
The absurdities we used to just passively accept has been ratcheted up to the extreme with 6IX9INE, to a point where we can no longer ignore them. His rainbow grills and hair say a lot more about current hip-hop culture as whole than it they do about 6IX9INE himself. He has become a personification of the absolute extreme of the rap lifestyle; the posterboy for postmodernism in hip-hop whether he knows it or not.
A good distinction to make between modernism and postmodernism is a transition from a focus on nature to a focus on culture. Our culture is an unimaginably crazy entity that breathes on its own and outlasts us all. By looking at the patterns that can be found in the outliers of our culture, we can understand this beast a little better.
Trump/Tekashi 2020