more than anything

have you been listening without your ears? be honest.

I was gonna make a list of VBS songs with rap but I'm so flabbergasted id even have to think about doing that that I can't even comprehend doing so since its at minimum half of their discography: so take some obvious examples from the top of my head:

RAD DOGS, READY STEADY, Beyond the way, Ultra C, Fire Dance, CRAZY, Wah Wah World, Crash The Party, Accelerate, Realize, YY, Alter Ego, Egoist, Shanti, Hana Obore, Bring it on, Doctor Funky Beat, Imperial Girl, Ifuudoudou, Tabi ni Kaeru

AND THERES EVEN MORE THAN JUST THOSE.

i hope no one takes what tom is trying to express here as an attack on you for not listening to rap a lot or not being huge on hiphop itself— thats just fine, everyone has their own tastes. i personally love and listen to rap artists but as a genre its not one i do not as much as other genres, or styles of hiphop music. and thats just fine, its my preference too.

but if your attitude towards hiphop, rap and black culture as a whole no matter the genre being shown somewhere is one of stereotyping, judgement and racism (even unintentionally— if youre seeing a black man dress or dance cutely and your first thought is some bs like “thugs can be cute too!” or vice versa— if a character or person thats paler skinned is wearing hiphop inspired fashion (nth wrong with it if it’s respectful) and your first thought is “why is __ a thug now lol” you should look at yourself for a moment. a lot of people love the things the people make, but not the people, and theres a huge disconnect there because so much OF the ‘people’ in question is IN that thing. like any other form of art, it is something so personal and tied to the individual and their experiences.. to enjoy a mockery or stolen version of it and hate the actual piece of work itself or the people who make it just because they made it and not any other race is, frankly, ridiculous and you need to do some serious introspection. no one can control how they are born and what race they are. ive had people not even know i was black / afrolatina because of the way i draw or whatever and its like… what is your depiction of a black artist like?? what does a black artist draw like to you?? you do realize whether you intend for it or not, you have a stereotype or prejudice right? am i supposed to draw a certain way as a race to you, and not as a human with different lived experiences and tastes?

they were contemporarily hated for just being these giant grey monoliths

but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!

grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.

then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like

stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?

grace: ... yyyes.

stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?

grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?

stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?

grace: he said he likes to match!

stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!

grace: i call him rocky :)

stratt: 😰

then on rocky's side of things it's like

eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?

rocky: yeah :)

eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.

rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄

eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?

rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!

anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.