I always feel a little bad when someone makes fun of hipsters for saying this. I mean, come on. We all feel a little special when we know a band no one else knows. It's like, OUR band. We kind of like it. Even if we don't lead off our explanation of the band with, "You've probably never heard of them," we still do a mini EFF YA when they say they've never heard of it. It's the exact opposite kind of inferiority that we feel when someone asks you if you like a band you've never heard of. We all want to fit in, sure, but we want to stand out too. Music taste is just one more way of doing this.

This was inspired by about two seconds about when I bought a Nicki Minaj song. I almost never buy music from the RnB/hip-hop genre. This is for two reasons. First, every freaking singer sounds the exact same. Female and male alike. They're all the same. The songs soung the same too. The same shitty love words over a shitty back beat. It sucks. Second, the hipster inside of me doesn't want to like Nicki Minaj. It's different when you're liking other artists that everyone else likes. Lady Gaga and Pink and such. Somehow that's okay to me. Nicki Minaj is the kind of music I listen to at school dances, and only at school dances.

So I pressed the buy button (mental dialogue, $1.29 for a song? What the hell?). And in my gut, I had this feeling of, "Oh my God you're buying a song that your high school classmates would love. What the eff is wrong with you?"

But why? It's an entertaining song and I think the things Nicki Minaj does with her voice are incredibly entertaining. It shouldn't matter that this is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. In fact, why the hell do we even recognize some things are our guilty pleasures? Guilty pleasure is the feeling we get when we worry the things we like are going to make us less cool in the eyes of others. But who defines cool? Why should we try to conform to some twisted idea of what average of awesome or in-style is?

I say, listen to what you like. Wear what you like. Watch what you like. And don't worry if it's unfashionable or uncool or un-you. You've only got one hundred years to live. Better make the most of it.