Watching the internet freak out about Lana Del Rey is a lot like watching that “30 Rock” episode on feminism: things get confusing, complicated and contradictory pretty quickly. And in the end, it seems like everyone kind of comes out worse for the wear.

The singer—birth name Elizabeth Grant—whose debut album as Lana Del Rey was preceded by an unusual amount of press and a highly dissed and dissected Saturday Night Live performance (the fact that anyone is outraged by being confronted with mediocrity when tuning in to SNL is kind of amazing to me), has shot to a sort of instant and infamous stardom. “Born to Die” was released last week to heavy criticism but high sales, and already the musician has been animated in Taiwan, analyzed as a Lynchian character, and made into an internet meme (an honor previously bestowed upon the likes of both Aretha Franklin and Princess Beatrice’s respective hats). And while Grant seems resigned to the criticism, I can’t help but feel a little more curious as to what the internet anger is all about, and whether or not it would be happening if Lana Del Rey were a man.

Because, to me, being Lana Del Rey seems to be a lot about what it means to be female in America. At every turn, Grant is met with some form of a double bind. We make a marked point of always commenting on her appearance, building up the idea that her beauty is of vital importance to her worth, only to get moralistic about the idea that she may have had plastic surgery to improve her looks. We call her out for manufacturing a new image after her attempts to find success as Lizzy Grant (aka herself) failed, and yet we only pay attention to her and her music once she has transformed into her current “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra” manifestation.We accuse her of being all smoke and mirrors, but act incredibly put upon when she has the audacity to be genuinely anxious and awkward onstage. And while I can recognize that Grant has made her own decisions in this game, I can’t imagine a move she could make at this point that wouldn’t garner criticism from some sector.

Which is not to say I’ve been transformed into Lana Del Rey’s biggest fan, nor that I disagree with the argument that there are more talented or deserving musicians out there that should be seen and heard as much as Grant (oh the meritocracy kool-aid: so delicious, so plentiful, and so likely to end in stand-offs and suicides). But I’m just not sure the value of Grant as a musician would be such a central issue were she male. And while I won’t be spending my money to witness Lana Del Rey perform awkwardly in person (I live in Portland, the awkwardness here is free), I will gladly accept her into the female musicians club if it means putting more highly visible images towards the normalization of women in music.

Lemon out!

-Becky

I’m going to let you in on a secret: The Grammy Awards will never be hip. But to quote the brilliant New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, the awards “present an entirely reasonable take on the pop landscape.” Salon.com was also pleasantly surprised at this year’s picks, announced last week and selected from music released October 1, 2010 through September 30, 2011.

Here’s the buzz leading into the awards, airing Feb. 12 on CBS:

The Sweep & The Snub: Kanye West swept with seven Grammy nominations including Song of the Year, Best Rap Song and Best Rap Album for 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but was glaringly absent among the nominees for Album of the Year. Never one to miss an opportunity to tout his own artist prowess, Kanye “blames himself” for releasing two equally-amazing albums in the same year (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Watch The Throne, his joint album with Jay-Z). How could he expect them to choose?

The Next Arcade Fire: Last year, upon the announcement of Arcade Fire winning Album of the Year, Twitter exploded with hilarious questions such as “Who are The Suburbs?” (The Suburbs is the Canadian indie rock band’s third album, which deservedly received the honor). It even spawned a Tumblr account Who Is Arcade Fire?. Indie’s sensitive, singer-songwriter Bon Iver is up for four awards. Expect his name to be mispronounced among confused viewers across the country just as Rihanna did while making the announcement. Don’t make the same mistake.

The Dark Horse: It’s been a huge year for 23-year-old dubstep producer and DJ Skrillex, but even he was “surprised” at his five nominations, including Best New Artist.

The Favorite: With six nominations and smash-hits that enjoy airplay on both Top 40 and college radio stations, Adele is favored to take home Album of the Year for her ultimate breakup album, 21.

The Celeb: Dan Radcliffe aka Harry Potter and his co-stars in the Broadway revival How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying are nominated for Best Musical Theater Album, up against Anything Goes and The Book of Mormon.

Read more about all the nominees in advance of the big show and happy listening!

—Whitney

Famed classical music composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) once stated, “to stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself; incredible and inconceivable.” Though Copland referred at that time to public support of the arts, to censorship and the literal policing of music, he was touching on the nerve of a subject vital to its contemporary presentation and production. The web brought with it a slew of changes to the arts, and to music specifically; namely changes to its “flow.” In a March 2010 Gizmodo editorial, Adam Frucci argues that the spread of new artists and songs has become increasingly consumer-controlled:

“It used to be that high-paid A&R executives would scour clubs to find underground bands to sign, acting as the filter between the millions of mediocre bands and the discriminating public. Today, obsessive music fans scour clubs and the web for free, discovering new acts and writing about them on blogs. Labels then discover bands from these blogs…You no longer need radio play and ads in Rolling Stone to get your band noticed. When a band makes a music video, there’s less of a need for a major label with contacts at MTV to push it through official channels to get it noticed. These days, you can just throw it up on YouTube and get it noticed by some music-or gadget-blogs.”

This new form of distribution has had a few effects. Some claim that the “democratization” in music acquisition and discovery has actually enabled and emboldened record labels to focus more on concert sales, or on ad revenue from streaming content. Others maintain that the industry is on the verge of extinction, showing their frailty by suing the pants off of certain cloud music sites. These aforementioned effects address the financial and legal questions, certainly, but they do little to illuminate perhaps the most relevant change here: that is, with so much music being put out—after all, “you can just throw it up on Youtube”—how do consumers know where to look? How can they make sense of what’s good and what isn’t?

Let’s take Lil B as an example, primarily because he is a really good one. Here’s a hip-hop artist who is no stranger to the industry. He first achieved mainstream success at 16, rapping in The Pack, a hyphy group hailing from Oakland, California. Following that, he more or less fell off the map, seemingly not to be seen again. At some point in 2010, he began recording music again, this time by himself. To date, he’s recorded more than 1500 songs, all of which he’s promoted exclusively through Myspace and YouTube. These videos and songs developed something of a cult following, leading his recent signing by none other than P. Diddy.

So where do consumers look for music? I’d start by saying that part of what has motivated me to investigate subjects on Trapit like Juggaloes, Pop Stars, and (needless to say) Hip-Hop is that I get pretty lost in the blogosphere. Although a lot of news comes through on pop music, the music on the fringes is often left out. We won’t find as many blogs devoted to Juggaloes as for pop stars or rappers, but they’re out there; sometimes right under our nose, in local papers or major news outlets. Even as an avid seeker of new hip-hop, I’m not able to keep up with the sheer number of blogs out there. So you can imagine the issue of attempting to find something like Juggaloes without knowing which sources to look in.

I’ve said enough at this point. Now check out this “Sick New Song.” Or this rapper from Portland, Maine. Or this awesome piece on Robert Glasper.

-Henry

As the Entertainment section editor here at Trapit, I have had the immense pleasure of following many topics that tug at my personal heartstrings. Perhaps none so perversely as my Juggaloes trap.

I created this trap months ago, the objective being to create a resource wherein we could follow all the Juggalo-related news leading up to the much-anticipated Gathering of the Juggaloes.

What is the Gathering? Well, that’s a hard question to answer. In many ways, it is a celebration of Juggalo culture—that is, it prides itself on standing apart from larger, more corporately-owned festivals like Bonnaroo or Coachella. It was started 12 years ago by facepaint-clad rap-rock group ICP (Insane Clown Posse), and serves as a bastion for music, carnival events (ranging from Midway games to “drunk helicopter rides”) not to mention lots of people spraying each other with cheap soda and eating mass amounts of meat.

There are always some names on the bill that come as a surprise to outside observers, but I’d say that in the case of Gathering 2011, there are some real anomalies performing. For one thing, it is to be emceed by none other than the Tiger-blood-swilling, Goddess-possessing, career-imploding Charlie Sheen. It gets deeper, though, with household rap brands like Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube, Juvenile, and funk legend George Clinton slated to perform as well.

The icing on the cake is ICP’s promotion for the Gathering, which usually involves a couple 30-minute infomercials depicting ICP and other Juggalo minions (one you may recognize as Vanilla Ice) being distressed with the state of music in the US. This year, the budget must have been higher, because both infomercials were filmed in what looked to be pretty elaborate sets.

At this point, you may be asking yourself: “Is this a joke?” The answer is inarguably no. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Pretty irresponsible, especially in light of recent festival-related deaths at Bonnaroo earlier this year? Totally. But a joke? I’d hope that after 12 years of ICP having produced the event successfully, we can move beyond entitling it a “joke.” Indeed, to some, this is the only event of 2011 that truly matters.

-Henry