Nine times out of ten, there’s a PowerPoint presentation behind every performer’s public persona.  Stars are created, not born:  Hired strategic teams brainstorm everything from which events their clients will attend to canned responses to interview questions to the precise timing of a star’s image overhaul. 

That is to say, maybe Wale's been coached to his current attitude.  Then again, in January of this year, he Tweeted that he “hates doin interviews” in the middle of doing one.  Publicist?  What publicist?   

Granted, publicity days are not the fun part of a celebrity’s job- they’re akin to “Groundhog Day.”  But they are an essential part of the job.  Veteran movie stars who could stuff a studio’s pockets doing no interviews whatsoever still participate in press junkets.  Wale released a demo in 2005, and just released his first studio album, Attention Deficit, this month.  Already jaded?  Careful; there’s a stable of hungry rappers just as talented as you who would gladly spend the day lounging in a plush warehouse doing the interviews a major record label lined up for them. 

Wale’s underground buzz radiated from D.C. to the mainstream in the East, Midwest, and South a year or two ago.  Still, he seems to be relatively unknown here in L.A.  Considering his respect for the West Coast-  he titled a mixtape 100 Miles & Running and addresses Tupac in “Letter"- you'd think he'd be excited about the prospect of nurturing his reputation here.  LA Stereo.TV's interview with him, however, did nothing to improve upon the "grumpy with the media" rumors swirling about him. 

OK, maybe he’s just not a people person.  Some performers save that energy for the stage. Yet he was just as blasé at his boring, zero-momentum show November 6th at USC.  No, it wasn’t the Pauley Pavilion and he wasn’t opening for Jay Z; it was a back-lot benefit for Pete Carroll’s “A Better LA” charity and he was the headliner.  He repeatedly interrupted his set to ask what the small, yet enthusiastic, audience wanted to hear, but then would perform a different song. Like it or not, right now he’s a hipster rapper; like it or not, a hipster rapper’s fan base is college students.  Free advice- it’s wise to interact with them further than asking who’s from D.C. and what high school those couple people attended.

This is not a critique of his lyrical ability. Wale’s a fine rapper, though his verses do lack that sticky. Nor is it a call for Wale to pander to the media- see the fireworks display that was Public Enemy's relationship with it.  And maybe this is a lesson in the positive (the ostensible vulnerability in his Tweets) and negative consequences of the ever-growing accessibility of celebrities. But an artist in the entertainment industry ultimately must engage and entertain his audience, and that includes more than complaining his album is the “most undershipped record in history.”  Tupac popped off to the media constantly, but he also bubbled over with charisma.  Kanye West annoys the hell out of everybody and is utterly charmless, but he has the Midas touch as a producer.  Art in this country is a commodity, and “if they don’t cop, you gonna get dropped.”

A couple weeks ago in The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones confirmed Nas' crochety 2006 proclamation that hip-hop is dead.  Whew, thank goodness a pop critic from an insular magazine whose mascot is Eustace Tilley is here to keep us informed on these things.             

The biggest problem with Frere-Jones' argument, however, lies not in the publication that houses it, but on what he bases it.  For most of the article, Jones focuses on the uniquely New York-ian legend Jay Z, and more specifically the rapper's latest album, The Blueprint 3.   

As "Empire State of Mind" restates, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere!  Let's hear it for New York! Yeah, if you've got a trust fund and upper-crusty society connections, you certainly can make it there.  Yeah, let's hear it for a city that's become so self-referential it's blinded to its own declining importance.  

New York is notorious for assuming it owns the exclusive rights to the production of cool, and it does indeed have evidence to support those bragging rights.  Yet over the past 15 years or so, Manhattan, and increasingly, the boroughs, have become so expensive that artists, arguably the people who create this cool, have moved out because they can no longer afford to live and work there.                    

Frere-Jones makes some valid points.  Rhianna's one-note kindergartener tone on "Run this Town's" chorus is in no way equivalent to other "so muh' fuckin' soulful" previous hooks. But she's Jay's pet project, so of course he'll put her on.  Kid Cudi's debut didn't live up to the promise of his mixtape. Hip-hop "splintered" into many different forms long ago.  And he does admit this may be hip-hop's time to "atomize."         

What Frere-Jones fails to do is look beyond New York to anyone other than the most obvious mainstream rap artists.  Along with Jay Z and Kid Cudi, he mentions Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Drake-  New Yorker, transplanted New Yorker, token Mid-Westerner, token Southerner, token newcomer.  For his rebuttal, he calls on Raekwon (from NYC's Wu-Tang Clan) and Freddie Gibbs, a Gary, Indiana, rapper who relocated to Los Angeles.        

Just as the New York of the late 1980s pouted over the West Coast's crashing of their rap party, Frere-Jones seems unwilling to acknowledge- or is just plain unknowledgeable- of the dirty, creative underbelly in other cities revitalizing hip-hop yet again.  Gibbs is just one of many as-yet-unknown artists rapping over original beats.  

His praise of Gibbs, in fact, highlights the other flaws in Frere-Jones' argument. What precedence do original beats have in qualifying rap as quality? Sampling has long been a cornerstone of rap, and rapping over someone's established song is a method of showing and proving you do can do it better. Why disparage "bloated expansion and leveraging of fantasies" while heralding "little sentimentality or exaggeration"?  Trash-talking, one-upping, and rapping about what you have while in reality precisely not having those things are the foundation of MC battling.  "Underdogs ended up sounding smug" because rappers have always been about faking it 'til they're making it.                 

It's not as if this is the first time critics have underestimated the staying power of hip-hop.  Puff Daddy killed it with crinkly, colored onesies.  Master P and then Cash Money Millionaires killed it with bling.  Soulja Boy killed it with ringtones.                               

Hip-hop will never die. Has jazz died? Classical music? There's an ebb and flow in all art forms. Hip-hop might devolve for a bit, but it'll also evolve again.  L.A.'s as-yet-unknown rappers seem primed to lead that way.