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I actually thought of Dirty as well, thought of maybe making a post but it felt a bit flimsy & the moment passed after eating.
Specifically this part of Klosterman's email when they thought Bowie had died last year, discussing matter-of-factly that rock stars as we originally came to think of them don't really exist anymore.
To a degree, that was true. Cobain might have been the last example of one & he did that by deliberating fighting against the idea of being one but then going out in the most cliche-d rock-myth-chasing fashion possible.
But meanwhile, hip-hop was still producing rock stars throughout the rest of that decade, one of which was most certainly the Old Dirty Bastard who existed in that Bunyan-esque rock-star universe even when hew was still breathing.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9019434/chuck-klosterman-alex-pappademas-david-bowie-career
You know, everyone still uses the term "rock star" incessantly, even though rock stars no longer exist. The idea of the rock star is a constant in our mental culture, but not as an element of our hard reality. Calling someone a "rock star" is like calling someone a "door-to-door salesman" — we all know what it means and we all know what it signifies, but no one occupies its literal designation. Instead, we say things like, "Game designers are the new rock stars" or "Bike messengers are the new rock stars." However, there are no rock stars becoming the new rock stars. That's over. The term is just an abstraction that connotes a specific type of public perception. And it's astounding how much of that specific abstraction is still a straightforward portrait of what David Bowie built in 1972. I realize he based the Ziggy Stardust persona on all these crazy, forgotten weirdoes he met throughout the '60s, but none of them are remotely similar to Bowie's performative vision. It's almost like he made a linguistic leap: "These kinds of artists create a sense of alienation, which means they are figurative aliens, which I will choose to perceive as a literal alien from outer space. And this alien will be obsessed with all the things I am obsessed with, because the alien is still me." It wasn't a reinvention, which everyone likes to claim. It was an invention.
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